Nobody forgot it. One after another, from the political father of many, to the last great star of world progressivism, through important promises for the future like the Italian one or presidents with enormous electoral pull like the Mexican one… everyone had words of recognition towards Pedro Sánchez. The Spaniard was the main protagonist of a weekend in which he is experiencing a moment of weakness, but he is confident of being able to recover space now that Donald Trump and his allies seem to begin to lose strength.
Barcelona, a fetish city for the left, the only large Spanish city in which at this moment all political power – mayor, council, Generalitat – is in the hands of the socialists, became this Saturday the ideal place for a Madrid native like Sánchez, who suffers in his hometown from strong harassment from a very large right wing,
In fact, the legendary Brazilian fighter, the uneducated metalworker who became president of a power with 200 million inhabitants, almost anointed him as a kind of political pupil – although he jokingly insists at 80 years old that he has a pact to live to 120. “Sánchez has done something extraordinary. We progressives are now very few. But he is managing to make the flock grow,” Lula declared after claiming that they had gone to Barcelona, called by the Spanish president, the Mexican Sheinbaum or the South African Ramaphosa. The image of Sánchez and Lula, alone on stage before 5,000 enthusiasts, with the Brazilian raising the Spaniard’s arm, marked the end of the summit and a kind of transfer of the legacy.
Those around the president believe that this summit in Barcelona manages to add image, sound and memory to something that they have already seen for months and that they have been pointing out as something that is not fully perceived in Spain – where the head of the Executive continues with enormous political difficulties and with the polls very much against him -: Sánchez’s international leadership. “Thank you for having saved the soul of Europe,” Giacomo Filibeck, general secretary of the European Socialist Party, even told him. That is why it is no coincidence that the most important meeting in recent years of world progressivism took place in Barcelona and was convened by Sánchez.
Barcelona, the same sources point out, sets a very clear story. While the right has simple messages of rejection of immigration, of a culture of the law of the strongest, of the elimination of taxes… the left lacks a powerful and simple narrative. This act is given, they say, around the president, and it also does so around the leader of a country that has the best economic data in the euro. In countries like Italy, for example, the case of Spain is the great reference for the opposition against the right-wing Meloni. “Thank you, Pedro, for your leadership,” declared the Italian Schlein. “Thank you for showing that the progressive agenda works. Thank you for defending our dignity with four words: no to war.” Lula insisted in his last speech on this commitment to the Spanish president as a reference: “I wanted to congratulate Pedro Sánchez for this progressive event that tries to show the world that democracy is not dead. That no one has to be ashamed of being progressive or being leftist. I praise Pedro because he had the courage to not allow US warplanes to leave here to bomb Iran.”
In recent months, and much more after his “no to war” and his direct clash with Donald Trump, in La Moncloa they had already detected a great increase in international political and media interest around the figure of Sánchez. More and more groups from all over the world are showing interest, contacting the Spanish Government to understand its project, or to ask, for example, about the latest project, which is contrary to the rest of Europe and even other progressive governments. There are also more and more requests for interviews, for special reports about Sánchez. Outside Spain the pull is indisputable, although inside things remain politically very complex for the president. But the summit, or the sum of summits over the weekend, because there have been up to three different ones, have made that movement that La Moncloa detected very evident.
Meanwhile, Sánchez played the role of host and great star of the European left with an optimistic message in the face of the pessimism installed in a part of the left. “I know that the far-right international and a lackey right make a lot of noise; that, sometimes, it seems as if no other voices exist. But let them not deceive us. They do not shout because they are winning, they shout because they know that their time is running out. The right does not lead, it languishes. People are realizing that they have no project, they have no solutions. Their policies have only brought war, inflation, inequality, social fracture. The time of the far-right international has come to an end. Let’s bring to the world a new era of progress,” he encouraged.
“They call us charos, lefties, reds, greens, progressives, woke. But we must recover pride,” Sánchez continued. “They have tried to make us ashamed of our ideas, but this is over. In Barcelona, this April 18, shame changes sides and it will do so forever. From now on, shame on them. For those who remain silent in the face of injustice, those who exploit workers, those who support war and violence. For us, the pride of being pacifists, environmentalists, unionists, feminists, the pride of being left-wing, because progressivism today is more necessary than ever. And to those who criticize the extraordinary regularization: Spain is the daughter of immigration and is not going to be the mother of xenophobia,” he added.
The Spanish president did not focus on talking only about left and right, but also about democracy versus authoritarianism, about messages of unity versus the hatred that triumphs on social networks, which Lula insists on calling “digital” because – he says – they have shown that they have nothing social. “Democracy cannot be taken for granted,” Sánchez reiterated before the progressive leaders. “The risk is that democracy becomes empty inside. But it is not enough to resist, we have to propose, lead, demonstrate that democracy can be strengthened,” the Spaniard insisted.
Sánchez seems convinced that this weekend in Barcelona begins to change things in the political imbalance at the moment in favor of the right. And, above all, the Spaniards and the Brazilians trust a lot in the fight against the techno-oligarchs, which they see as the great key to explaining the success of the extreme right in the world. “Technology,” highlighted the Spanish president, “does not govern itself. Without rules, technology divides us. We cannot accept that misinformation conditions our societies or that algorithms reward hate.”
An atmosphere of unexpected progressive optimism emerges from Barcelona. After Trump’s fiasco in Iran, Orban’s defeat in Hungary, Meloni’s failure in the referendum in Italy and the slowdown of the extreme right in the French municipal elections, a change of cycle no longer seems entirely impossible. “Let’s not forget that all waves, no matter how high they are, die on the shore,” stated the other host, the Catalan president, Salvador Illa. Sánchez closed his speech as the new global progressive leader with that call for optimism: “We must do something more, recover faith in progress. Lula believes in democracy because a humble person like him became president of the Republic of Brazil. They want to see us scared, dejected, defeated. Let us focus on protecting, not transforming. But we are not going to buy their pessimism and hopelessness”, closed the dream summit, a president who has growing support outside, although inside he faces challenges increasingly difficult, the next one in Andalusia.
