The Government has approved the grant of Spanish nationality by letter of naturalization to former presidential candidate of Nicaragua and political dissident Félix Alejandro Madariaga Blandón, as well as to former Venezuelan deputy and member of the interim Government of Juan Guaidó, Marco Aurelio Quiñones, currently a member of the opposition negotiation table with the Executive of Venezuela.
The decision appears in the Official State Gazette (BOE), which today published these two naturalizations along with those of five other people. All of them have been authorized by the Executive at the proposal of the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Courts, Félix Bolaños.
Madariaga Blandón was appointed in 2017 Executive Director of the Institute of Strategic Studies and Public Policies (IEEPP) of Nicaragua, from where he focused his work on analyzing the impact of corruption on public administration. Later, in 2018, he joined the Unidad Nacional Azul y Blanco (UNAB) movement, one of the main opposition platforms to the government of Daniel Ortega.
In September of that same year, he appeared before the UN Security Council to denounce the repression of the Nicaraguan government, which led to a warrant for his arrest for organized crime and financing of terrorism, forcing him to leave the country.
In 2021 he ran as a candidate in Nicaragua’s general elections, but in July he was detained and, two years later, expelled from the country along with 221 other political prisoners. Now he has acquired Spanish nationality by letter of naturalization.
Deputy linked to the party of Leopoldo López
As for Marco Aurelio Quiñones, former Venezuelan deputy of Voluntad Popular, he is an opposition leader who was part of the strategic team of the Interim Government of Juan Guaidó and, in addition to his training as a political scientist, served as a parliamentarian in the National Assembly for the state of Anzoátegui until 2021.
He is currently in exile from Venezuela, but he has continued with his political work within the leadership of the National Assembly of 2015, which functioned as an alternative parliament to the Constituent National Assembly promoted by Nicolás Maduro in 2017 without a prior referendum. Since last August 1, he has been part of the Dialogue Table, which was constituted through a telephone call, a space for direct negotiation to address the Venezuelan institutional crisis that enjoys the backing and facilitation of the Government of the United States, according to Venezuelan media.
In this process, delegates from the Executive Branch of Venezuela and representatives of the board of directors of the National Assembly elected in 2015 participate. Quiñones has now been naturalized Spanish by letter of naturalization.
Five other new Spaniards by letter of naturalization
Along with these two cases, the BOE also includes the granting of Spanish nationality by letter of naturalization to other relevant figures, including Colombia’s former Minister of Foreign Relations Rosa Villavicencio, the Costa Rican academic and professor at the Pompeu Fabra University Umanzor López-Baltodano, and the Dominican-American diplomat Julissa Reynosso, who served as the Ambassador of the United States to Spain and Andorra.
The list is completed with the executive director of the Corporation Excelencia en la Justicia (CEJ), a prominent Colombian think tank, and with the young Italian Stefano Mandozzi, a professional surfer of 13 years, who has also been included in this naturalization procedure.