Venezuela: The Wild Card in Spanish Politics [Extra Essay]
The arrest of the owner and CEO of Plus Ultra in December for allegedly using bailout funds to launder Venezuelan cash received much less interest from the international press than it should have done
[This essay was originally scheduled for 24th January, but given recent events I have decided to publish it early with some minor edits to keep it up-to-date]
"Divisional General (Venezuela)" by Gilbertobm is marked with CC0 1.0.
In early December, an explosive news story in Spain went largely unnoticed by the international press. The national police arrested Julio Martínez, the owner and chairman of a small airline called Plus Ultra, along with Roberto Roselli, the company’s CEO. They are both being investigated for alleged money laundering.
Crucially, Plus Ultra, which was founded in 2011, received a bailout worth €53m from Spain’s Socialist-led government in 2021, during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. A previous investigation into the rescue has already been dismissed by the courts. Although the details of the current investigation are secret, press leaks suggest that the prosecuting judge is considering whether the airline used the money from the Spanish government illicitly. The investigators are considering whether part of the money was used to pay off loans from a criminal organisation with links to the populist-left government of Venezuela.
The arrests have attracted much attention from the national press in Spain, largely because former Spanish Prime Minister (PM) José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who acts as a public apologist for the Venezuelan regime, has friendly links with the airline. Zapatero is notorious in Spain for his inept mismanagement of a series of recessions, which began in 2008. He has re-entered public life in recent years thanks to his ally, current PM Pedro Sánchez.
Zapatero has denied being involved in the bailout. Plus Ultra’s owner Martínez has said that the two are just friends, who happen to go running together. However, the two were reported to have met in the back of a car in a street without mobile coverage hours before the arrest. And the former PM’s daughters, both in their early 30s, work with the airline through the marketing agency they founded.
Although the international press dropped the ball on this story, this weekend’s attack on Venezuela by the United States (US) makes it more relevant than ever. US President Donald Trump’s administration claims to have captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and taken him to a secure location elsewhere. Venezuela is likely to dominate the headlines in the weeks ahead. The implications for Spain are potentially explosive.
Perhaps bizarrely, Plus Ultra is the second airline with links to Venezuela to pose problems for Sánchez’s government. The first is Air Europa, which received a bailout of €475m during COVID. The PM’s wife, Begoña Gómez, is under investigation - the airline’s parent company sponsored a course that she ran throughout the rescue negotiations. Cash payments to a friend of hers are in the spotlight.
The Venezuelan angle is less clear with Air Europa than with Plus Ultra, but it is still pertinent. Globalia, the airline’s parent company, was owed €200m by Venezuela before COVID was declared a pandemic. In January 2020, Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, held a meeting with Sánchez’s former Transport Minister, José Luis Ábalos, on her plane in Madrid. She was banned from entering the European Union (EU) at the time for undermining democracy in her home country.
The subject of the meeting (known by the press as Delcygate) is under investigation, and Ábalos is being held in custody. However, the possibility of a back-channel redemption of Venezuela’s debt to Air Europa, combined with the possibility of undeclared commissions for solving the issue, are both being probed in the courts. There have been spicy rumours of gold bars changing hands on the plane, but nothing has been proven yet.
Other simmering scandals suggest that links between Sánchez’s administration and Maduro’s populist regime in Venezuela should be seen as the wildcard in Spanish politics in the months ahead. For example, Mexico’s Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has publicly accused Sánchez of turning the Socialist International (SI) into a “corrupt and undemocratic” organisation that systematically launders clandestine cash from Venezuela. Sánchez has been head of the SI, an international coalition of global socialist parties, since 2022.
News geeks should keep a close eye on Hugo Carvajal, known as “el Pollo” (or the chicken). He was head of military intelligence for Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chávez from 2004 to 2011. Zapatero sought to normalise relations between the two countries during these years, for example, with a deal to sell military aircraft and ships to Venzuela in 2005. Carvajal was arrested in Spain in 2021 for alleged drug trafficking and was extradited to the US. He has pleaded guilty of all charges. He has previously accused Zapatero of clandestine ownership of a Venezuelan goldmine. The former PM has denied the rumours.
However, there has been speculation that Carvajal has reached a deal with the US court to avoid the maximum sentence of 50 years. If this is the case, it is worth wondering what dirt the former spymaster has on the Spanish government (if indeed he has any dirt). If Spain’s Socialists have taken poor decisions when it comes to Venezuelan cash, having Maduro and other members of his administration in US-controlled prisons will be seriously bad news for Sánchez. Please note the word “if” is doing heavy lifting in the previous sentence. It is too early to jump to conclusions.
In order to understand the background to these multiple, interlocking scandals, we will conclude this essay with a look at the drug trade in Venezuela, The South American country lies next to Colombia, which produces up to 80% of the world’s cocaine. Venezuela has a long Caribbean coastline, which makes it a useful departure point for traffickers.
There have been rumours about links between the Venezuelan military and drug traffickers for many decades. For example, in 1992, there were allegations that Chávez’s failed coup attempt had been backed by drug traffickers. He later became president through legitimate means in 1999, only to undermine democratic institutions until his death in 2013. His successor, Maduro, has continued the process so systematically that he can perfectly well be described as a dictator.
While Chávez was licking his wounds in prison in 1993, there was an alleged drug-trafficking plot, backed by the US, involving high-ranking members of the Venezuelan military. Someone tagged the plotters the Cartel of the Suns (el Cartel de los Soles), which refers to the sun emblems on the uniforms of Venezuelan generals.
The name re-emerged in 2004 while Chávez was president. There were once again allegations of corruption in the military, with informal links between generals and traffickers. In 2005, Chávez expelled the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) from Venezuela. This led to a murky period with little oversight or transparency. Much of the information about these years is speculative.
After Chávez’s death in 2013, he was replaced by Maduro (a former bus driver, who became a leading trade unionist). The regime’s poorly designed populist-left policies meant that Venezuelans were already facing shortages. This intensified in 2015 as the oil price fell (the country is a major exporter). The result was one of the worst economic collapses in human history, with hyperinflation, starvation, and disease. Crime and mortality rates both soared. Many Venezuelans have emigrated.
Drugs became such an important part of the equation that by 2025 the US had designated the Cartel of the Suns as a terrorist organisation. Trump’s administration has been blowing up Venzuelan ships that were allegedly trafficking drugs before the raid to capture Maduro in Caracas.
It is worth making a note of caution at this point. Critics of the denomination as a terrorist organisation say that if the cartel really does exist, it should be seen as more of an informal network than a hierarchical trafficking organisation like those found in nearby Colombia. Much of the information about links between Maduro’s regime and drug trafficking remains murky.
Although the Plus Ultra arrests are certainly worthy of serious attention in the wake of the US raid, Carvajal is the only person mentioned in this essay to have pleaded guilty so far. Others who have been arrested, are being investigated, or are suspected of being involved are innocent until proven otherwise.
There is also a precedent for investigations into Venzuelan influence falling short of the rumours. In 2014, a hard-left party called Podemos (We Can) was founded in the window between Zapatero presiding over an economic collapse in Spain and Maduro doing the same in Venezuela. It grew out of the anti-austerity movement.
There were widespread rumours about the party receiving clandestine cash from Venezuela as a way of importing Latin American populism into Spain. Nothing was ever proven beyond consulting work by its founders in Venezuela. There are also investigations into organised smear campaigns against the party by the right, although, again, nothing has been proven on this side either. It is worth noting that support for Podemos fell sharply as the Venezuelan economy collapsed - many of its founders had been fans of Chávez.
Although it is far too soon to draw any conclusions, it is well worth keeping an eye on the various scandals. I can only hope that this week’s extra essay prompts some of my fellow journalists who pitch stories about Spain to the international press to take the Plus Ultra issue a little more seriously. If Venezuela really is a wildcard, as I have argued, watchers of Spanish politics should expect the unexpected in the weeks ahead. The comments are open. See you next week!
Previously on Sharpen Your Axe
Further Reading
What Is Populism? by Jan-Werner Müller
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This is a great investigation, Rupert! I had no idea that Spain’s government could be linked to Venezuela’s. This is absolutely something to monitor, especially now since Venezuela will be under different leadership.