end" and said that the "strategy of escalating confrontation will just give the government the chance to discredit us and continue with more repression". According to The Washington Post, he was more like Henrique Capriles in "tone and strategy", and more moderated than the "hard-line wing" of opposition from Maria Corina Machado and Leopoldo López. National Assembly Shortly after he was elected in 2015 to the National Assembly, Requesens' sister, Rafaela Requesens, and a friend, Eladio Hernández, were kidnapped by unknown parties in the state of Táchira. Requesens was assigned to the National Assembly Commission for Social Development and Integration. In April 2016, amid teaching strikes, Requesens and Miguel Pizarro volunteered to work on the Education Law bill — which had not been developed in over a decade — to raise teachers' minimum wage and bring standards into law. By 2016, Requesens was calling for Maduro's resignation. Requesens attempted to run for Governor of Táchira, the state for which he was already a deputy, in 2017. However, the electoral commission refused to accept pre-candidates to the ballot, and so votes in his favor were not counted, something he spoke against in the Assembly the day after the vote. In early 2018, Requesens was part of the faction of the Assembly that formed a coalition called the Frente Amplio Venezuela Libre to ask for free elections in the country, and for Maduro to leave, saying that the opposition and country has to move forward civilly. Experiences of violence Requesens and Juan Pablo Guanipa were briefly detained on 30 November 2017 when they tried to cross the border to Colombia. In May 2018, Requesens was one of the politicians to step in when press personnel were being attacked by guards outside the parliamentary buildings, fighting with the soldiers; the same day, Requesens and Carlos Paparoni were attacked and held down when trying to come to the defense of journalists outside the Supreme Court. He rejoined street protests the next day, rejecting elections due later in the week. 2017 Venezuelan protests Requesens was back on the street in 2017, now as an elected deputy. In April 2017, Requesens was with other young protestors marching on the Ombudsman's office when he was attacked, along with another deputy. He was hit in the head and received deep cuts on his face. According to José Manuel Olivares, Requesens had to have surgery to fix broken bones