Opposition Leader Flees Venezuela

“Venezuelans, this decision has not been a simple one,” Mr. López said in a Twitter post late Saturday, promising to continue working against the Maduro regime from afar. “Be assured that this servant can put up the fight from any place.”

Described as athletic and audacious by those who know him, Mr. López, who is 49 years old, left the rambling ambassador’s residence, in a quiet, affluent neighborhood in the eastern end of the city, and made his way to Aruba, said one person close to Mr. López and familiar with his departure.

The person said Mr. López had traveled to Miami in a journey that began in Aruba. “It’s an operation that’s been in place for months,” he said about how Mr. López abandoned the residence. The person said Mr. López’s final destination would be Spain, a center of opposition activity, where his family—including his wife, three children and his father, a member of the European parliament—resides.

Questions, however, remained about his departure, and three figures in the opposition movement who live abroad said the departure came after a negotiation between Spain’s socialist government and the Maduro regime.

A person close to the Maduro government said Mr. López was allowed to escape to facilitate ongoing dialogue with the European Union, which has tried to broker negotiations between Venezuela’s political divisions.

The ambassador’s residence is tightly guarded, with the agents from Mr. Maduro’s secret police, the Sebin, regularly questioning visitors on their way out of the mansion.

Mr. López left the embassy days after the Spanish ambassador with whom he was close, Jesús Silva, was recalled after more than three years in Caracas. People close to Mr. López said he was concerned he would no longer be welcome in the residence. Venezuelan intelligence agents detained two employees of the ambassador’s residence after Mr. López abandoned the house, a person with knowledge of what happened said.

In Washington, the Trump administration took notice of the departure of Mr. López, who has had close ties with Republicans influential in shaping Venezuela policy, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and officials at the National Security Council.

“Leopoldo López is a democratic political leader who was deprived of his freedom for almost seven years by this illegitimate regime,“ said Morgan Ortagus, a State Department spokesperson. ”He has now escaped from Venezuela to continue the struggle for freedom, and we are sure he will continue to make an important contribution.”

Mr. López’s exit from Venezuela was seen by some in the opposition as a way to inject energy into an opposition movement that has been beaten down by Mr. Maduro’s repressive policies, including arrests and torture of opposition figures, and its own internal squabbling over how to weaken the regime. At the residence, Mr. López could speak regularly to Mr. Guaidó and other members of the opposition but not offer public comments or address the party he led, Popular Will.

In recent months, moderate leaders in the opposition have called for a shift away from Mr. López’s strategy of direct confrontation with the regime. Some of them favor working with international brokers such as Josep Borrell, foreign policy chief of the European Union, to negotiate in the hope of persuading Mr. Maduro to hold free and fair elections.

Now free, Mr. López is expected to ratchet up lobbying efforts to make sure that international pressure against Mr. Maduro doesn’t ease, said Pedro Burelli, a longtime friend and advocate of Mr. López.

“Leopoldo leaving shakes up the tree in every sense,” said Mr. Burelli. “He is a force of nature. He will be exposed as a free man to the back and forth of real politics.”

A close aide to Mr. López in Europe, Isadora Zubillaga, said his departure “is a shot of oxygen for all of us who are fighting abroad and inside.”

In a post on Twitter, Mr. Guaidó ridiculed Mr. Maduro, noting that Mr. López’s exit underscored the regime’s diminishing grip on the country. “Maduro you control nothing,” read Mr. Guaidó’s post.

There was no immediate response from the Maduro administration. A spokesman for Spain’s embassy in Colombia declined to comment.

Mr. López’s departure from Venezuela comes in the wake of a feverish 22-month effort of protests and uprisings—including a failed seaborne raid in May that Mr. Maduro’s security forces quickly squelched—designed to topple the regime.

The U.S. has strongly supported Mr. López—his wife, Lilian Tintori, even met President Trump in the White House in February 2017—and Mr. Guaidó. That support has increasingly rankled other prominent opposition figures, as well as foreign diplomats who believe that the mix of protests and U.S. sanctions against Mr. Maduro has failed and that regime foes need a new strategy.

Mr. López, who comes from one of Venezuela’s most prominent families, has long been an unwavering opponent of a regime accused of widespread rights abuses and election rigging. In January 2019, he had his greatest success when the U.S. and dozens of other countries declared that they recognized his protégé, Mr. Guaidó, the head of the National Assembly, as Venezuela’s legitimate president, and not Mr. Maduro.

But despite U.S. economic sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, Mr. Maduro has clung to power with the help of the country’s allies, namely Russia, China and Iran.

Once a mayor of an important district of Caracas, Mr. López became a target of the regime under Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, whose government barred him from holding public office. In 2014, he led a movement he called “The Exit,” which tried to unseat Mr. Maduro through large protests.

He was arrested and sentenced to 14 years in prison on terrorism and sedition charges after a trial that human-rights organizations and foreign governments called a sham. His lawyers were prohibited from calling witnesses in his defense.

Still, Mr. López had played a hands-on role in the opposition movement, from prison and later from his home, where he had been under house arrest until April 2019, when he moved to the Spanish ambassador’s residence. He led strategy meetings with other dissident activists on matters ranging from regime change to the oil industry through the video chat app Zoom, according to opposition figures.

Earlier this year, more than a dozen opposition sources, including several close aides of Mr. López, told The Wall Street Journal that Mr. López had been involved in the planning of a botched effort in May by a small group of Venezuelan military defectors and two former American soldiers to invade Venezuela and trigger an uprising against the Maduro regime.

The plan failed, with the security forces killing a handful of invaders and arresting the rest. Mr. López denied having any role in the attempted coup.

—José de Córdoba in Mexico City and Courtney McBride in Washington contributed to this article.

Write to Juan Forero at Juan.Forero@wsj.com and Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com