The American bombing of Venezuela and the arrest of its president, Nicolás Maduro, by the American army shocked this Latin American country and the world this Saturday, and were intensely felt in Spain, particularly in Madrid. According to data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), more than 400,000 Venezuelans lived in Spain at the start of 2025, the latest figure available. Only the Spanish capital concentrates half of this exile, with 200,000 Venezuelans registered. None of them take off their cell phone or computer at these times to contact their loved ones in Venezuela and follow minute by minute what is happening in their country.
For José González Vargas, a 34-year-old communicator, the news, which occurred in the early hours of this Saturday, surprised him while he was still asleep: “My mother called me to tell me that they had attacked La Carlota, an air base in the heart of Caracas. I started looking at the WhatsApp groups that I share with other Venezuelans, inside and outside the country, and they were already sharing videos and speculating about what was happening,” he says.
From this confusion came the first certainties, and with them also the hope for political change in his home country: “I was a journalist for five years in Venezuela and I learned not to get angry quickly in situations like this. In the past, I have had moments of hope and disappointment in the face of positive change in Venezuela. I have the impression that anything can happen, but I look with caution.”
The communicator also calls for peace: “This is a critical moment where calm and reason are necessary. It is perhaps the end of a very dark chapter for Venezuela, but also the beginning of a period of uncertainty and instability.”
“Historic day! It’s over”
Daniela Goicochea, 41, co-founder of the Goico hamburger chain, sums up her feelings to this newspaper in two words: “Historic day! The businesswoman draws a parallel with some of the most important moments experienced by Venezuela in recent decades, such as the death of former president Hugo Chávez: “I have the feeling once again that it is over. From the outside we are calm for the moment because we know that our families are fine. We are all waiting for Trump’s announcements. But let’s celebrate now.”
Zuleika Meneses Gómez, a 34-year-old environmental engineer and political activist in Spain, learned of Nicolás Maduro’s capture while coordinating, with other Venezuelans in Missouri, the release of information that many people in the country could not publish out of fear. “We checked that the teams in all corners of Venezuela were doing well and that in the torture centers they had not done anything to our brother political prisoners,” he explains. He says he feels a mixture of hope and worry: enthusiasm about the possibility of one day returning to his country, but also concern about the continuity in power of figures like Diosdado Cabello, Minister of the Interior who, in recent hours, has asked the population to demonstrate against the American attack.
In Meneses’ case, the impact is particularly personal. He claims to have participated in political processes since his youth and says he had to leave Venezuela three days before the 2024 elections after receiving threats. His entire family now lives in exile and one of his relatives was imprisoned for a year. “We have a certain sense of justice,” he summarizes. However, he insists that this is only the first step and hopes that there will be more arrests, that the opposition Edmundo González will assume the presidency and that all political prisoners will be released. Only then, he says, will many Venezuelans abroad consider returning home.
“This regime has many heads”
For his part, Alessandro Di Stasio, a Venezuelan investigative journalist from Armando.Info and resident in Madrid, calls for caution regarding the capture of Nicolás Maduro. “This regime has several heads. Nicolas may have left, but as long as we do not know where the others are, we cannot declare victory,” he warns. He believes that the United States was able to act according to a still unknown political plan and evokes two possible scenarios: that the operation serves to present Donald Trump as the winner and to reduce military tensions, or that it is part of a transition agreed with the support of sectors of the armed forces. Regarding the messages broadcast by leaders such as Vladimir Padrino López or Delcy Rodríguez, he interprets that they seek to send signals of internal control to the military and to their own bases.
All this, in a morning of hugs, tears and calls of joy in thousands of Venezuelan homes in Spain. In the house of Tony Carrero and Raquel Pestana, in Tenerife, they wait impatiently for the moment to see the image of a detained Maduro. “Some time ago, I put a bottle of cava in the fridge to open it when I saw the photo of Maduro surrounded by American soldiers,” says Carrero, who, with his partner, devotes himself to legal advice on immigration matters. “Thanks to our profession, we see daily the suffering of people, the pain that this regime has caused,” explains Carrero, 60, who arrived in Spain 15 years ago and has not returned to Venezuela.
Journalist Dariela Sosa, based in Madrid and founder of the Arepita newsletter, which covers political news in Venezuela, says she has been following this news since the last presidential elections. “I wake up every day since July 28, 2024 and check my WhatsApp to see if anything has happened,” he says. “Today it happened!” he comments. Her children, aged 10 and 6, never stop asking questions. “They’ve been asking about their grandparents and their uncles and their cousins, and they’re worried that bombs will fall on them. We’re trying to explain to them in simple terms what’s going on,” said Sosa, who was working on a special edition of his newsletter this morning.
26 years of chavismo
Their information is aimed primarily at people like Carolina Pacheco, a 56-year-old lawyer who didn’t want to believe what was happening until she could verify it through different media. “It is essential that this paves the way for a government led by competent, honest and respectable people, who will once again guide Venezuela towards development. The damage that Chavismo has caused to the entire region over these 26 years is incalculable.” Pacheco summarizes the desire for political change that was evident throughout the Venezuelan exile: “I hope that the next negotiations will allow the formation of a new government and that our leaders, Edmundo and María Corina, can effectively carry out the work for which they were elected.
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