Venezuela says opposition presidential candidate González has left the country for asylum in Spain

International Desk: Former Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González has fled into exile after being granted asylum in Spain, delivering a major blow to millions who placed their hopes in his upstart campaign to end two decades of single party rule.

The surprise departure of the man who Venezuela’s opposition and several foreign governments consider the legitimate winner of July’s presidential race was announced late Saturday night by Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez.

She said the government decided to grant González safe passage out of the country, just days after ordering his arrest, to help restore “the country’s political peace and tranquility.”

Neither González nor opposition leader Maria Corina Machado have commented.

Meanwhile, Spain’s center-left government said the decision to abandon Venezuela was González’s alone and he departed on a plane sent by the country’s air force.

“Spain is committed to the political rights and physical integrity of all Venezuelans,” Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares said on the X social media platform.

González, a 75 year old former diplomat, was a last minute stand in when Machado was banned from running. Previously unknown to most Venezuelans, his campaign nonetheless rapidly ignited the hopes of millions of Venezuelans desperate for change after a decade long economic freefall.

While President Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of the July vote, most Western governments have yet to recognize his victory and are instead demanding that authorities publish a breakdown of votes. Meanwhile, tally sheets collected by opposition volunteers from over two-thirds of the electronic voting machines indicate that González won by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

The tally sheets have long been considered the ultimate proof of election results in Venezuela. In previous presidential elections, the National Electoral Council published online the results of each of the more than 30,000 voting machines but the Maduro-controlled panel did not release any data this time, blaming an alleged cyberattack mounted by its opponents from North Macedonia.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab, a staunch Maduro ally, sought González’s arrest after he failed to appear three times in connection to a criminal investigation into what it considers an act of electoral sabotage.

Saab told reporters the voting records the opposition shared online were forged and an attempt to undermine the National Electoral Council.

Experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center, which at the invitation of Maduro’s government observed the election, determined the results announced by electoral authorities lacked credibility. In a statement critical of the election, the U.N. experts stopped short of validating the opposition’s claim to victory, but they said the voting records it published online appear to exhibit all of the original security features.