Spanish transport minister José Luis Ábalos, who has been the target of heavy criticism from the opposition after it emerged that he held a secret meeting with Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez at Madrid's Barajas airport, has responded on Saturday to those who, like the Vox and PP parties, are calling for his resignation: "Perhaps others may be just passing through politics. I came to stay and no one's sacking me."
Ábalos, one of the heavyweight Socialist (PSOE) party figures in the new Spanish cabinet, made the comment during a party event in Santiago de Compostela, where he confessed to being in the middle of a "slightly weird" weekend. "Anyway, it bothers me, but it doesn't impact me. D'you know why? Because I've come a long way to get here, I've been doing this since 1976," he explained.
The revelations appeared on Friday, when it emerged that Ábalos had held a secret meeting with Nicolás Maduro's number two, the Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez, at Madrid's airport last Sunday. As part of the sanctions applied against the Maduro regime, Rodríguez is prohibited to enter European territory. According to the Socialist leader, he went to the airport to meet Venezuelan tourism minister Fernando Plasencia - who did have travel permission - and shortly before arrival was told that the Venezuelan vice-president was on the same plane. The news was manna from heaven for the Spanish right wing parties, whose reading was that the Socialists had made a 180 degree turn in their politics on Venezuela after the entry of the leftist Podemos into the Pedro Sánchez government.
José Luis Ábalos told newspaper La Razón that he had been warned by the Spanish interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska that Maduro's number two was not to leave the plane. Ábalos said he boarded the plane himself and "exchanged greetings" with Rodríguez after being asked to do so by her Venezuelan cabinet colleague Plasencia. The plane subsequently left again, taking Delcy Rodríguez on to Turkey.
This Saturday, the Spanish transport minister treated the incident as one of the inconvenciences of the job. "When one of these things happens, do you know what I think?", he told his party audience. "I think of the prime minister. When you get bothered by this nonsense, imagine the prime minister, under tremendous pressure that he's been putting up with for years.".