The President of the Government, , is making headlines around the world in recent hours for being the only leader of the European Union (EU) who has clearly positioned himself against the , which began last Saturday. An open challenge to the plans of the American leader, Donald Trump, who yesterday broke out into reprimands and threats.
The Republican criticized the Spanish cabinet for its decision to prohibit US military aircraft from using Spanish air bases (Rota and Morón de la Frontera) to attack Iran, because Madrid understands that it would breach the bilateral agreements of 1953 and the United Nations Charter, since the operation does not have permission from the Security Council and, therefore, it understands it as . Trump, from the White House, threatened yesterday to cut off all trade with the EU’s fourth largest economy.
And that has made Sánchez today in all the reference media of the community bubble, starting with one of the most prestigious. In this newspaper they maintain that “Sanchez’s confrontation with Trump places the Spanish socialist in a position similar to that of former French president Jacques Chirac, who emerged as the most defiant European leader in 2003, appealing to international law and multilateralism in an attempt to corral opposition to the US invasion of Iraq.” It must be remembered that Spain did join that war, in the famous photo of the Azores from the popular .
“It is easy to understand why Sánchez is so willing to come to the international stage and confront Trump. In Madrid, he has little room for political maneuver, with his party plagued by corruption scandals and defeats in regional elections,” states the analysis signed by Aitor Hernández-Morales. “But it can act with much more freedom in foreign policy to present itself,” he says, as “a bulwark against it.” Four words to define the socialist. His position, he adds, “is liked by Spanish public opinion.”
“It is easy to understand why he is so willing to come to the international stage and confront Trump. In Madrid, he has little room for political maneuver, with his party plagued by corruption scandals and defeats in regional elections”
As you remember POLITICOwe are not facing the first episode of Sánchez’s opposition to the actions of the US president, who . Gaza or Venezuela are other precedents. However, there is something new now, apart from the fact that it hits home, for the bases: “the severity of his sentence has put him visibly at odds with other EU leaders, who have been much more equivocal.” Just look at Germany, for example.
Sánchez has described the attack on Iran as a “violation of international law” and an “unjustified and dangerous military intervention”, when the Commission as a whole calls for calm and points to Iran, not the US or Israel, to stop.
That is why this medium insistently compares him with the former French president. “Like Chirac in 2003, Sánchez is not limited to speaking from the sidelines, but is also making a broader call for countries to stand up to the United States and Israel.” According to a diplomat who reviewed the emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers for the newspaper, held last Sunday, “Spain pressured the bloc to denounce the US for violating international law and criticized Brussels’ double standards in its application of the law.” It hasn’t happened.
Defense Minister Margarita Robles explained Monday that U.S. troops stationed at the Spanish air bases of Morón de la Frontera and Rota must “operate within the framework of international law” and that the facilities will be prohibited “from providing support except if necessary from a humanitarian perspective.”
Robles said that the bases had not participated in last Saturday’s attack against Iran and that they would not be used for “maintenance and support operations,” the information recalls.
The president of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, and the president of the United States, Donald Trump, in an image from October 2025, when the road map for Gaza was presented in Egypt.
“Great antipathy”
“The prime minister’s position on the war is well received in a country where Trump is greatly disliked. According to a recent survey by the (CIS), three quarters of Spaniards admitted to having a “very bad” opinion of Trump, and eight out of ten considered him a threat to world peace,” the same medium notes. He was consulted, above all, after the arrest of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela last January.
This is also welcomed within the Spanish coalition government, he says, “which includes the fiercely anti-far-left Sumar party,” a note for less situated European readers. “Still, the prime minister’s allies insist that his policies are not based on political calculations and are not an explicit campaign against Trump, but rather a reflection of his political principles.”
POLITICO spoke to Spain’s Economy Minister, , before Trump made his trade threat and asked if Madrid had weighed possible economic retaliation from the United States before speaking. “Spain does what it considers correct and in accordance with humanitarian and international law,” Corpus responded.
