We had the visit of a few PP representatives during the election. The Partido Popular Español is certainly no friend of Chavez but it seems that it is now cured of residual Franco remains and has embraced democracy. After all Aznar refused to run for a third term that he would have won without much trouble (though one can question why Rajoy is so determined to hold to the helm of the PP after two defeats, but I digress).
Apparently such news have never reached chavismo who now through its chofiller Maduro, ooops!, Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, is calling El Pais and ABC of Spain tabloids issued from the Franco era, fascists rags that defend the exploitation of men if "the South". Somebody should inform that poor soul that El Pais was founded 6 months after the death of Franco, when free press was barely becoming a possibility and that if ABC is indeed from the right. it preceded Franco for quite a while it remains that it was not necessarily his favorite during his long rein and that today VEA or El Correo del Orinoco could do worse than getting inspiration from its pages....
Well, whatever Maduro said or influenced it is reported today that when Carlos Iturgaiz, Spanish representative to the Strasbourg Eurochamber left Venezuela he was not only stopped for a while at the airport by the SEBIN, security police of the regime, but he had to listen to a lecture about the wonders of chavismo before he could get his passport back and be allowed to fly to Spain "una clase de formación del espíritu bolivariano" a class of bolivarian spirit foramtion.
Seriously, do people in chavismo still believe that those who oppose Chavez do so out of ignorance? That a mere chat will change their outlook? I have met evangelical missionaries with infinitely more intelligence and doigté. At any rate, Iturgaiz had no problem telling the SEBIN creep lecturing him that probably that was why so many people voted against Chavez.