The deputy of the Venezuelan National Assembly Timoteo Zambrano Guedez will arrive today in Madrid to take office as the new ambassador of Venezuela in Spain, according to diplomatic sources reported to DiplomacyNews.
Zambrano, who has been until a few days ago the president of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Venezuelan Assembly, will immediately present his Copies of Style to the Introducer of Ambassadors of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From that moment he will be able to perform his duties except for attending protocol events. For that, he will have to wait to present his Credentials to King Felipe VI.
Zambrano’s appointment was confirmed by the National Assembly of Venezuela as its president, Jorge Rodríguez, noted, “by evident majority” on May 26, at the proposal of President Delcy Rodriguez.
Zambrano replaces Gladys Gutiérrez at the head of the Venezuelan Mission in Spain, who took office in April 2024. The new ambassador will also be the permanent representative of Venezuela to UN Tourism, the UN specialized agency based in Spain.
Zambrano’s appointment —who is the secretary general of the opposition party Cambiemos— marks the first time that the Chavista regime appoints an ambassador from the opposition. A much more notable fact when it comes to appointing the head of the Venezuelan Mission in Spain.
The appointment, however, has already generated controversy before Zambrano has arrived to take office. In Venezuela, the hardest sectors of the opposition accuse him of having excessive closeness to the Chavista authorities. In Spain, the opposition to Pedro Sanchez’s government directly labels him as the “ambassador” of Zapatero in the Caribbean country.
Timoteo Zambrano began his political career in 1998, as a deputy of Acción Democrática, the social-democratic party that supported the governments of Carlos Andrés Pérez. He distanced himself from this party in 1999 to stand out as an opponent of Hugo Chávez. Since then he has gone through several parties —Alianza Bravo Pueblo, Polo Democrático, Un Nuevo Tiempo— before founding Cambiemos Movimiento Ciudadano and joining the coalition Concertación por el Cambio, of which he was the presidential candidate, Henri Falcón.