Almost no one wants to fight directly with Donald Trump in Santa Marta, Colombia, 3,000 kilometers from the coast of the United States and very close to the border with Venezuela, the country in which the leader of the most powerful army on the planet. No one talks about him clearly, and the s (Community of Latin American and Caribbean states) are also a way not to clash with him.
But in reality, Trump is present in all the debates, and his attacks on Venezuelan ships, murdering the crew members with the excuse that they were carrying drugs, and the transfer of an aircraft carrier to the coasts near Venezuela, have a great role in the atmosphere of the summit. And in that context, the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, one of the protagonists of the summit with the Brazilian Lula, has offered himself in Colombia as an anti-Trump leader who defends a multilateral world of collaboration and agreements completely different from that of the American far-right.
Sánchez and Lula, supported by other progressive Latin American presidents such as the Chilean Gabriel Boric or the Uruguayan Yamandú Orsi, and somewhat less by the Colombian Gustavo Petro himself, who is going through difficult times, are trying to confront Trump and his imperial vision of a world dominated by bilateral relations between him and some presidents and by the imposition of their decisions by the force of their economy or their army, both of which are the most powerful in the world. In his speech at the summit, Sánchez thus filled his speech with references to that multilateral world based on rules versus the world of Trump’s imposition. “No nation can face global challenges alone,” said Sánchez.
The leader of the PSOE claims that two years ago, under the Spanish presidency of the EU, he managed to revitalize this forum with a meeting in Brussels attended by practically all the relevant Latin American and European presidents. Now the Colombian Petro has had much less success in calling, but Sánchez believes that this type of multilateral structures must be maintained precisely to sustain an alternative world to Trump’s.
Sánchez has moved to try to ensure that the summit does not fail and he himself has made a great effort to get to Santa Marta de Belém – he had to use two different planes because the big one could not land at the airport of this Caribbean city – and other high-level Spanish leaders have also gone there such as the vice-president of the Commission, Teresa Ribera – the president, Úrsula von der Leyen, has not attended – and the president of the EIB and former minister of Economy Nadia Calviño.
Sánchez is thus trying to keep the link between the EU and Latin America strong at a time when Trump is trying to regain weight on this continent by displacing the Europeans and the Chinese, especially through the new leaders of the Latin American extreme right.
“If two years ago the EU-CELAC summit was a political priority, today it is a geostrategic imperative. Because the challenges we face—the violation of international law in Gaza or Ukraine, attacks on free trade, the weakening of global governance—affect us all,” Sánchez explained.
“The world has changed a lot since our last summit in Brussels. And in such a changing world, this alliance offers something essential: trust. A relationship based on principles, mutual respect and shared vision. Europe and Latin America can and must be a beacon of stability, prosperity and openness in this uncertain time full of risks,” the Spanish president insisted.
Sánchez received applause when he proposed that the next UN secretary general should be a woman and Latin American. One of the most popular is Rebeca Grynspan, former secretary general of the Ibero-American secretary general, but also Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile, or Susana Malcorra, former Argentine chancellor during the presidency of Mauricio Macri.
The Spanish president has also used the forum to put pressure in favor of the definitive ratification of the EU-Mercosur agreement, which Spain hopes to achieve before the end of the year, around December 20, when the next summit of this group of countries in the south of the American continent is held.
France continues to offer resistance and Emmanuel Macron was not at the EU-CELAC summit, a clear gesture of distance, but he was in Mexico, where he has tried to strengthen the bilateral relationship. The EU is also working to strengthen its ties with Mexico again in an alternative to the Trump world of which Sánchez is a standard bearer. Despite France’s resistance, Sánchez is convinced that there will be ratification at the end of the year, according to La Moncloa sources.
“Europe continues to be the leading investor in Latin America, with Spain in the lead,” Sánchez claimed in the face of this advance by the United States and China on the continent. “My country is, in addition, one of the largest contributors to the Global Gateway Agenda. Of the 9.4 billion euros that, two years ago, we committed to contributing until 2027, we have already mobilized 5,300 for operations in the region and connectivity projects, green and digital transition, health, and sustainable infrastructures. From Hispasat satellites in Central America to the electrical interconnection between Chile and Peru, this cooperation creates a shared future,” he insisted.
Sánchez also took the opportunity to make a new demand for the positive discourse on immigration, precisely in Colombia, where the issue is very sensitive due to the deportations that Trump is carrying out, confronting Petro very aggressively. “The European Union and Latin America are much more than partners: we are intertwined families. Millions of Latin Americans and Caribbeans contribute today to the progress of Spain, in the same way that Latin America welcomed thousands of Europeans in search of hope during the 20th century. Our common history is a bridge that continues to grow on the best possible pillars: our people,” Sánchez concluded.
The Spanish president thus consolidates his line of anti-Trump speech, although he avoids direct clashes with him and never mentions him. For Sánchez, like , the great political battle of the coming years is this, between those who are committed to multilateralism and science, and therefore to the fight against climate change, against Trump and his allies, who abandon multilateral forums and are committed to fighting the battle on their own and by the law of the strongest.
