Why Spain’s prime minister has broken ranks in Europe – and dared to confront Trump

18 hours ago 11

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, rarely utters the words “Donald Trump” in public. Since the US president took office, Sánchez has typically referred to the US administration and its president without explicitly naming him. This was initially interpreted as a calculation designed to avoid personal confrontation, but even without using Trump’s name, Sánchez has managed to deliver harsher criticism of the US president’s aggression than any of his fellow European leaders.

This week, Sánchez did not wait for a joint EU statement to issue judgment on the US’s illegal military intervention to capture the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro: he swiftly joined Latin American countries in condemning it. A few hours later he went even further, saying the operation in Caracas represented “a terrible precedent and a very dangerous one [which] reminds us of past aggressions, and pushes the world toward a future of uncertainty and insecurity, similar to what we already experienced after other invasions driven by the thirst for oil”.

Sanchez was speaking in Paris on Tuesday after a meeting of the “coalition of the willing” for Ukraine. Indeed, he made the case that on Venezuela, Ukraine and Gaza he was applying the same reasoning in defence of an international order “based on the observance of fair rules, not on the law of the jungle”.

He also pushed back against US sabre-rattling over Greenland: “Spain, believing in peace, diplomacy and the United Nations, cannot, of course, accept this, just as we cannot accept the explicit threat to the territorial integrity of a European state, as is the case with Denmark.”

If Sánchez is sounding more outraged than other European leaders, even progressive ones, then one reason is the influence of Spain’s far-left parties, including Sumar, the junior party in his governing coalition. But he is also drawing on broad social and even political consensus in Spain on many of these international issues.

Sánchez’s messaging on foreign policy is popular in Spain, a country where confidence in Trump is among the lowest in the world and where there is widespread support, in particular, for the rights of Palestinians and Ukrainians. Even before this latest crisis, Venezuela was part of the national debate in Spain. About 600,000 Venezuelans live in Spain, and Spanish politicians attack each other over their past positions and connections to the country. In Madrid, home to more than 200,000 Venezuelans, conversations about Caracas are commonplace everywhere, from classrooms to coffee queues.

Politicians of Venezuela’s opposition, including its leader, Edmundo González, now live as refugees in Spain. There is a broad agreement across the Spanish political class about condemning the Maduro regime, but also questioning the legitimacy of US actions, even among the leadership of the conservative Popular party (PP).

Some hawkish PP voices, particularly the regional president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, often invoke “Chavismo” to attack Sánchez’s government, suggesting it has connections with the Venezuelan regime, even though it refused to recognise Maduro as the legitimate president after the 2024 election and officials have described Venezuela as a dictatorship. It is Díaz Ayuso, however, who stands out in Spain for remaining less critical of Trump. Even the PP-founded thinktank FAES, led by the former conservative prime minister José María Aznar, criticised US “colonialism” and its marginalisation of the Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado.

Will Sanchez’s condemnation jeopardise Spain’s relationship with the US – the fear motivating other European leaders to keep silent – or indeed have any impact on Trump? So far, it seems barely to have registered with the White House, but Trump has previously suggested that Spain should be expelled from Nato after it resisted his demands for increasing military spending. In October, Trump hinted at punishment with extra tariffs mentioning that the Spanish economy was doing “very well, and that economy could be blown right out of the water with something bad happening”. No such punishment has yet materialised.

Yet, as with its handling of Gaza and Ukraine, the Spanish government is often better at words and gestures than meaningful actions, and too often tends to think about international crises in terms of domestic political gain.

Madrid has offered to mediate in the crisis in Venezuela, partly with the interests of big Spanish companies in mind, particularly the oil company Repsol and the telecommunications conglomerate Telefónica. Five Spanish prisoners were among a group of political detainees released in from jail in Caracas on Thursday, a move welcomed by Sánchez as an “act of justice”.

This year is likely to be a difficult one for Sánchez’s Socialist party, with polls forecasting setbacks in upcoming regional elections. The prime minister’s popularity has been eroded by corruption scandals involving close allies and a series of sexual harassment allegations about officials in his party.

For Sánchez, talking about difficult global issues may offer useful respite from his mounting domestic challenges. And his consistently smooth and outspoken manner does not just go down well in the global south – most Spaniards agree with him on the fundamentals of Trump, Ukraine and Gaza. Sánchez’s criticism of Trump may be less risky than it first appears – but he is still being bold in articulating what many other European leaders think, but dare not say.