Venezuela’s Maria Corina Machado draws a huge Madrid rally and rebuffs meeting with Spain's Sánchez

MADRID (AP) — Venezuela's exiled opposition leader María Corina Machado drew several thousand supporters Saturday to a rally in Madrid, where the Nobel laureate declined a meeting with Spain's progressive Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on a multicountry European tour.

Sánchez, an outspoken critic of U.S. President Donald Trump, was hosting a summit of like-minded progressive leaders from around the world Saturday, while Machado extolled Trump's ouster of Nicolás Maduro in January.

Earlier this year, she presented Trump with her Nobel Peace Prize.

“What happened in the last few hours at the meeting (Sánchez) held in Barcelona with several leaders and political figures from different countries demonstrates why such a meeting was not advisable,” Machado told reporters Saturday.

Machado insisted at an earlier event she will be returning to Venezuela, but declined to say when, or how, and acknowledged the challenges implicit in a return to her country.

Her multistop European tour, during which she met with the leaders of France, Italy and the Netherlands, comes while Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez has continued in her temporary role, exceeding the 90-day limit initially imposed on it, while the U.S. government has lifted some sanctions against her.

Machado criticized Rodríguez’s government, saying it represented “chaos, violence and terror,” and reiterated her belief in the need and advent of democratic elections in Venezuela. Machado added she did not regret presenting Trump, whose administration has largely sidelined the crusader for democracy, with her Nobel.

She said was in permanent contact with officials in the Trump administration and trusted Washington's phased process in Venezuela since Maduro's removal.

“There is one leader in the world, one head of state, who has risked the lives of his country’s citizens for the freedom of Venezuela. And that is Donald Trump,” Machado said, referring to the U.S. military operation in January.

The opposition leader drew a huge crowd in the Spanish capital’s Puerta del Sol, standing beside Madrid’s conservative regional leader Isabel Díaz Ayuso, one of Sánchez’s loudest critics who feted her earlier in the day.

Some 600,000 Venezuelans live in Spain, home to the largest population outside the Americas. Many fled political persecution and violence, but also the country’s collapsing economy. A majority live in the capital, Madrid.

Twenty-seven-year-old Grehlsy Peñuela, a Venezuelan migrant in Spain who attended Saturday's rally, said she still placed her hopes for her country in Machado and her eventual return to Caracas.

Peñuela, who held signs with the faces of her two cousins she said remain incarcerated in Caracas as political prisoners, would consider returning to Venezuela only under one condition.

“That the current government completely steps down,” she said.