Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil summoned the Spanish ambassador there to a meeting Friday after ordering his country’s envoy to Spain to come home for “consultations”.

The new flare-up followed Spain’s Defence Minister Margarita Robles calling the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro a “dictatorship” Thursday, and expressing her support for “the Venezuelans who had had to leave their country” because of his regime.

Gil called the comments “rude and insolent”.

Caracas was also angered by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s decision to meet Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia earlier in the day.

He fled to Spain on Sunday and requested asylum.

The meeting came just hours after the head of Venezuela’s parliament called for ties with Madrid to be cut.

But Madrid tried to cool the rhetoric Friday by insisting that it was Venezuela’s right to exercise its “sovereign decision”.

“I have recalled ambassadors several times – a recall is the sovereign decision of each state,” insisted Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares.

“We are working to have the best relations possible with our fraternal cousins in Venezuela,” he told public radio.

Madrid has been at loggerheads with its former colony since a disputed presidential election there in July, with Spanish lawmakers voting to urge Sánchez’s government to recognise González Urrutia as the “legitimate winner” of the vote which Maduro claims he won despite international scepticism.

Spain stands with ‘democracy’

Sánchez published a video on X showing him walking in the gardens at his official residence with González Urrutia and the opposition figure’s daughter Carolina González, who lives in Spain.

“Spain continues to work in favour of democracy, dialogue and the fundamental rights of the brotherly people of Venezuela,” he posted, adding that he “warmly welcomed Edmundo González Urrutia to our country”.

The 75-year-old went into hiding after the July 28th poll that the opposition insists he won, with Maduro ordering his arrest.

The United States on Thursday announced new sanctions against 16 Venezuelan officials, including some from the electoral authority, for impeding “a transparent electoral process” and not publishing “accurate” results.

Venezuela issued a statement shortly afterwards denouncing the sanctions as a “crime of aggression”.

The US has recognised González Urrutia as the winner of the election.

So far, however, Spain and other European Union nations have limited themselves to refusing to accept Maduro as the victor and calling on the Venezuelan government to release the voting tally sheets.

“From a political point of view, the Spanish government has been clear since the elections were organised,” Sánchez had said Wednesday.

“We are doing something very important: working for unity in the European Union so that we can find a way out that reflects the democratic will expressed at the ballot box by the Venezuelan people.”