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Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest says his life is dedicated to the mission to bring democracy to his home country, Venezuela.

Sadly for him, it's a mission which has consistently delivered disappointment,

which is why Leopoldo Lopez, the charismatic Harvard-educated

leader of the Popular Will Party in Venezuela, actually lives in exile in Spain. In 2019, after a

presidential election widely condemned as rigged, Lopez's protégé, Juan Guaido, was declared interim president by a majority

in the National Assembly. The Trump administration, governments in Latin America and in Europe,

all recognized Guido's claim and sanctions were imposed on the Maduro regime. Amid economic chaos

and impoverishment, millions of Venezuelans fled their country,

but crucially, Maduro dug in. The security forces stayed loyal and divisions re-emerged in

the Venezuelan opposition. Last month, the opposition withdrew support for Guido's claim to the presidency. Tentative negotiations

with Maduro resumed and in the US, Latin America and Europe, the strategy of maximum pressure on the

socialist government was abandoned. Where does the Venezuelan opposition go from here? Well, he joins me

now from Madrid. Welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you for the opportunity. Back in 2019, your big idea as a key leader of the Venezuelan

opposition was to undermine socialist president Nicolas Maduro by creating an alternative president and an alternative

government. Would you now acknowledge that big idea has failed? Well, certainly, we were not able

to remove the dictatorship. And if we are measured by that standard, certainly we didn't get to

the results we expected. But it's also true for any other

...