Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez announced plans to nationalize the local arm of Spain’s Banco Santander. In a televised speech earlier today, Chavez said that the government would attempt to purchase the Banco de Venezuela after Santander’s directors wanted to sell it to a private firm. Chavez neglected to provide too many details as to why he wanted to nationalize Banco de Venezuela except to say that “the government was interested” in buying it.
It was a week ago that Chavez reconciled with Spanish King Juan Carlos yet Chavez anticipates a backlash from across the Atlantic:
"There'll be headlines in the Spanish press, 'Is Chavez harming Spain'... to undo the (diplomatic) relations we've just mended," he said, alluding to his meetings last week in Spain with King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
The meeting closed a diplomatic spat over a verbal squabble between Chavez and the king at a Latin American summit in Santiago in November, during which the king told Chavez to "shut up."
Part of several key sectors have been nationalized in Venezuela under Chavez such as telecom, energy, and oil. Not all of the government's gestures have gone smoothly as was the case with ExxonMobil earlier this year.
Image- BBC News
Sources- The Latin Americanist, Bloomberg, Reuters UK, eluniversal.com, Al Jazeera English, AFP
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