Florida Republican Members of Congress call the award winner the “new Simón Bolivar,” while the Spanish far left calls her a “coup plotter.”
14ymedio, Madrid, October 10, 2025 – The joy this Friday of the Venezuelan opposition, the Norwegian Committee itself and numerous democratic countries over the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to María Corina Machado contrasts with the US Administration’s disgust at Donald Trump not having received it, the indignation in the Cuban regime’s press, and the silence of some governments, such as that of Venezuela.
“Nobel Peace Academy joins the anti-Venezuela strategy and awards María Corina Machado,” headlines Cubadebate, many hours after the news broke and without even its own text, simply reproducing an article published in Almayadeen.
The article criticizes the Nobel Committee for awarding the prize to the Venezuelan “without taking into account her political background, her ties to sectors of the fascist far right, her promotion of sanctions against the Venezuelan people, and her support for foreign pressure on Venezuela.”
It criticizes the “leader” – thus, with ironic quotation marks – for “attempts at destabilization and calls to disregard the election results.”
Furthermore, it criticizes the “leader” – thus, with ironic quotation marks – for her support for the “economic sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union on her country” and for the “attempts at destabilization and calls to disregard the election results.”
With respect to those elections, the results of which have been challenged by independent observers and much of the international community, Cubadebate says: “The opposition she leads then claimed victory in the 2024 elections, held with the candidacy of her puppet, Edmundo González Urrutia, currently exiled in Spain after an arrest warrant was issued against him.”
Just after 3:00 p.m. this Friday, the Cuban president finally spoke out on social media. For Miguel Díaz-Canel, “the politicization, bias, and discrediting of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Committee has reached unimaginable limits.” The also First Secretary of the Communist Party called Machado “a person who instigates military intervention in her homeland” and took the opportunity to endorse Maduro, whom he called the “legitimate president” of Venezuela.
For his part, Steven Cheung, advisor to the President of the United States and White House Communications Director, accused the Nobel Committee on Friday of putting “politics before peace.”
“President Trump will continue to make peace deals, end wars, and save lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” Cheung added in a tweet.
According to Bloomberg, Trump himself, who has not spoken publicly, did call Machado privately. The Venezuelan leader, in an English-language message published on X, dedicated the award to the US president for his
support of the opposition’s cause. “I dedicate this award to the long-suffering people of Venezuela and to President Trump for his determined support of our cause!” the former congresswoman wrote in her post, which included a direct dedication to the US head of state in English.
Machado maintained that the Venezuelan opposition is on the “threshold of victory” and that “today more than ever” it counts on the U.S. president, the people of Latin America, and the “democratic nations of the world” as its main allies in “achieving freedom and democracy.”
In recent weeks, President Trump had vehemently demanded the award, reiterating that he had ended several conflicts: Cambodia-Thailand, Kosovo-Serbia, Democratic Republic of Congo-Rwanda, Pakistan-India, Israel-Iran, Egypt-Ethiopia, and Armenia-Azerbaijan. This Thursday, he added another achievement to eight: the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, although experts point out that he has not promoted any formal peace treaty and that, in several of these conflicts, only fragile truces were reached.
Even more eloquent is the silence of Marco Rubio, who signed a letter last year to support Machado’s nomination for the Nobel Prize
Even more eloquent is the silence of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who last year, as a senator, signed a letter supporting Machado’s nomination for the Nobel Prize, which was ultimately awarded today. Rubio was part of a group of eight Republican legislators who sent the letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee on August 26, 2024, one month after the Venezuelan elections, in which the opposition denounced fraud by Nicolás Maduro, and requested the award for Machado.
On the other hand, several Republican congressmen from Florida, such as María Elvira Salazar and Rick Scott, did celebrate Machado’s award, calling her a “liberator” and a “new Simón Bolívar.”
Neither the Maduro government in Venezuela nor that of Miguel Díaz-Canel in Cuba have commented on the matter. The latest statement from the Cuban Foreign Ministry regarding its oil ally was issued this Thursday, but it only alludes to the Trump administration’s deployment of ships in the Caribbean to combat drug trafficking, which Havana is attacking as an “escalation” prior to an “imminent aggression.”
“No comment,” was the response regarding Machado’s Nobel Prize from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, also an ally of the island. “We have always spoken about sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples, not only out of conviction, but because the Constitution establishes it, and I would stop there with my comment,” she added during her regular morning press conference.
“It’s not up to me, of course, to assess the decision taken by the Nobel Committee.”
In a similar vein, the Minister of the Spanish Presidency, Félix Bolaños, spoke without mentioning María Corina Machado by name: “It’s not up to me to assess, of course, the decision taken by the Nobel Committee. I do say that Spain is always a country committed to human rights, to democracy, to peace, which prevails throughout the world, and Spain worked intensively to secure the release of the person who has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize during the time she was in prison, and therefore, on that subject, there is little more to say.”
Bolaños has been the only member of Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist government—for whom the Spanish Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory, Ángel Víctor Torres, also claimed the Nobel Peace Prize—to comment on the award to the Venezuelan. Both Sánchez and his Foreign Minister, José Manuel Albares, have maintained a conspicuous silence, which has been noted by the Spanish press and the opposition.
“The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize not only honors a personal feat. It sends a decisive message to the world: the path to peace is democratic firmness, not complicity with tyranny,” wrote Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of Spain’s Popular Party, on his social media. He lashed out: “That is why Sánchez hasn’t congratulated her yet. Not only have they awakened from their dreams, but they have also been held up to the mirror of their infamy.” He added: “Spain will once again have a government that distances itself from the dark interests of Sánchez and Zapatero and defends freedom with the courage of María Corina Machado.”
The message referred to former President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of the PSOE, officially the “international mediator” between Maduro and the opposition, who has been singled out for suspicion of having economic ties to the Caribbean regime.
“The truth is that to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Corina Machado, who has been trying to stage a coup d’état in her country for years, they could have given it directly to Trump or even posthumously to Adolf Hitler,” said Pablo Iglesias.
Finally, members of the far-left Podemos party, who have never hidden their sympathy for the Bolivarian leaders, have been directly aggressive. “The truth is that to give the Nobel Peace Prize to Corina Machado, who has been trying to stage a coup d’état in her country for years, they could have given it directly to Trump or even posthumously to Adolf Hitler. Next year, let Putin and Zelensky share it. If nothing else…” wrote former Spanish Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias on social media.
“The level of discredit that international institutions that aspire to represent humanity have experienced in recent years is extremely high. The Nobel Peace Prize is now being awarded to coup plotters and war criminals,” said Ione Belarra, a Podemos representative and party general secretary.
Machado has remained in hiding within her country since her last public appearance on January 9, on the eve of Maduro’s inauguration, when she led a protest in Caracas to defend González Urrutia’s claimed victory in the 2024 presidential election, as Maduro was declared the winner of that election by an electoral body controlled by officials aligned with Chavismo.
All Nobel Prizes are endowed this year with 11 million Swedish kronor (997,000 euros, 1.2 million dollars) and will be awarded on December 10 in a double ceremony: in Oslo for the Peace Prize, and in Stockholm for the rest.
The committee hopes the opposition leader will be able to travel to the Norwegian capital within two months to collect the award, although it emphasized that it is too early to say and that a “serious” security issue must first be resolved.
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