MADRID – Venezuela’s main opposition leader María Corina Machado said she’s “coordinating” her return to the country with the US, without giving a date. 

Ms Machado, speaking at a press conference in Madrid on April 18, said she’s in “permanent” contact with officials in the Trump administration and “trusts” the phased process Washington is pushing in her home country.

“My return to Venezuela is intended to ensure that we channel Venezuelans’ anguish and yearnings for democracy in a civic and organised manner, centered around an electoral process,” Ms Machado said.

Conversations with the US have been “detailed and frank” and kept “private” in agreement, Ms Machado said, adding that this also applies to her opinion on certain issues, when requested.

She thanked US President Donald Trump for “risking the lives” of US citizens to secure change in Venezuela, and defended her offering of the Nobel peace prize to him as a “mandate” of the Venezuelan people.

In early March, Ms Machado said she would return within “the next few weeks,” following Nicolas Maduro’s Jan 3 capture by US forces.

Her arrival would test interim President Delcy Rodríguez’s tolerance for dissent and the US’s commitment to back the opposition leader it once pledged to protect.

Ms Machado had stayed largely in hiding after the 2024 election that Maduro claimed he’d won and the world acknowledged her party won.