Venezuela and Taiwan, a clear example of the double standards of the Spanish left

The capture of dictator and drug trafficker Nicolás Maduro by the United States has unleashed the anger of the Spanish left.

Only four European rulers condemn Maduro's capture, including Putin and Sánchez
Taiwan and the double standards of many countries that recognize Palestine as a state

A few months ago, the Spanish left refused to call for an end to the repression in Venezuela.

The coalition government of socialists and communists has not hesitated to align itself, once again, with the most sinister regimes: only four European leaders have condemned Maduro's capture, and two of them are Vladimir Putin and Pedro Sánchez. The Spanish left has been displaying a clearly complicit attitude toward the Venezuelan dictatorship. Just a few months ago, the PSOE and the rest of the Spanish left voted against demanding that Maduro cease the repression in Venezuela, showing their absolute indifference to the human rights violations by that socialist regime.

The far left did not condemn the attacks on Ukraine and Israel, but did condemn the capture of Maduro.

Following Maduro's capture, the far-left partners of Sánchez's government have even called for severing relations with the United States, a measure they have not called for against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. An invasion, incidentally, that the Spanish far left did not condemn, including the then communist MEP Sira Rego, currently a minister in Sánchez's government.

In 2023, the far left also failed to condemn Hamas's terrorist attack against Israel, which resulted in the largest anti-Semitic massacre since the Holocaust. These are the same people who are now invoking "international law" to support Maduro, a dictator whom the Spanish far left has been supporting without expressing a single criticism of his constant human rights violations.

The case of communist China and free China, two independent countries since 1949

But to see more clearly the extent of the Spanish left's double standards, one need only look at its position on two Far Eastern countries. In 1927, the Communist Party launched a military uprising to seize power in China. This coup d'état triggered a long civil war, interrupted between 1936 and 1945 to confront the Japanese invasion of Chinese territory. In 1949, the communists who staged the coup in 1927 won the war, and two countries were formed: the Republic of China, governed by the nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek on the island of Taiwan and other adjacent islands, with its capital in Taipei; and the People's Republic of China, governed by the communist leader Mao Zedong on the Chinese mainland, with its capital in Beijing.

Both countries were initially under dictatorships. In 1987 Taiwan began its transition to democracy. Communist China is still a dictatorship, a brutal regime that unleashed one of the greatest genocides in history and that still governs through a one-party system and systematically violates human rights. The Beijing dictatorship has been issuing threats against Taiwan for years, which it considers part of its territory, even though Taiwan has never been under the rule of the Chinese communist dictatorship. Strictly speaking, it is an independent country with its own territory, its own governing bodies, and its own armed forces.

Beijing's threats against Taipei are like communist East Germany threatening to invade free Germany during the period when that country was divided into two independent states as a result of World War II. Something similar is happening on the Korean Peninsula, divided into two independent countries (a communist dictatorship in the north and a democratic regime in the south) as a result of a war fought between 1950 and 1953.

The silence of Sánchez's government in the face of Beijing's threats against Taiwan

In the seven years that Pedro Sánchez has been in power, the current Spanish government has never condemned the threats from communist China against Taiwan. The Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not issued a single statement of condemnation against these threats, and Minister José Manuel Albares has not dedicated a single tweet to Taiwan since taking office in July 2021. Spain does not even recognize Taiwan as an independent country (a shameful fact that is not attributable only to the Socialists: the People's Party maintained the same policy), but at the same time the Spanish Consular Section in Taipei reports to the Consulate General in Manila, Philippines, and not to the Spanish Embassy in Beijing.

Sánchez has become the main European ally of Chinese communism

Meanwhile, Sánchez has openly praised the Beijing dictatorship, becoming one of its main European partners, to the point that Chinese communism already refers to Spain as the "China of Europe". This rapprochement between the Sánchez government and the Chinese communist dictatorship has not only provoked criticism from the United States, but also criticism from the European Commission for endangering national security by awarding the management of judicial wiretaps in Spain to the Chinese company Huawei.

Sánchez's communist partners openly support the Beijing dictatorship

Something similar is happening with the far-left partners in Sánchez's government. Last Saturday, the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), to which two ministers in Sánchez's government belong (Yolanda Díaz and Sira Rego), condemned the capture of Maduro by the United States, calling it a "vile and criminal imperialist aggression" and stating that it is an "illegal attack in the eyes of international law."

The situation changes if we're talking about a democratic country like Taiwan. On April 11, 2024, the PCE (Communist Party of Spain) openly supported the threats of communist China against free China, stating that "NATO and the countries of the so-called AUKUS agreement (Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) are carrying out unacceptable interference in China's internal affairs by patrolling the coasts near this country under the pretext of the Taiwan issue, an internal matter that only concerns the Chinese nation."

In the end, the position of the Spanish left is always the same: it has a pathological tendency to align itself with dictatorships, as Sánchez has been doing for years. It is not international law that makes the Spanish left furious about Maduro's capture: what they are doing is displaying, once again, their complicity with a criminal regime that illegally usurped power in Venezuela and has been committing all kinds of atrocities.