Spain’s leader, rejecting Iran war, escalates long feud with Trump.

By JASON HOROWITZ

For more than a year, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain has positioned himself as the leader of Europe’s left-wing resistance to President Donald Trump.

As Trump scaled up deportations, Sánchez gave migrants a pathway to residency. As the president championed American tech companies, Sánchez sought to restrict them. And this past weekend, Sánchez refused to let American warplanes use Spain as a launchpad for strikes on Iran, leading Trump to threaten to end trade with Spain.

On Wednesday, those tensions came to a head as Sánchez gave a special address to the nation in which he condemned the campaign against Iran and reiterated his refusal to participate, despite Trump’s threats of economic retaliation.

“We are not going to be accomplices to something that is bad for the world, simply because of fear of reprisals from some,” Sánchez said in the televised speech.

“It’s not even clear what the goals are of those who launched the first attack,” Sánchez added, referring to the United States and Israel.

Sánchez’s address from the Moncloa Palace in Madrid escalated the standoff between Trump and his most vocal European critic, who has sought a path different from the leaders of Britain, France and Germany, who issued a joint statement promising to help in defensive actions against Iran.

The speech came less than a day after Trump held a freewheeling briefing in the Oval Office, during which he threatened to inflict economic pain on Spain and dismissed Spanish restrictions on U.S. warplanes.

“We could use the base if we want,” Trump said. “We could just fly in and use it.”

President Emmanuel Macron of France called Sánchez on Wednesday to express solidarity, the French presidency said.

The contretemps between Washington and Madrid is the latest example of how Sánchez, facing political strife at home, has sought to distinguish his policies from those of Trump.

Sánchez has lamented Trump’s “unjustified and unfair” tariffs. He has described Trump’s plans to move Palestinians from the Gaza Strip as “immoral” and described Israel’s conduct there as “genocide.”

Spain, alone among NATO members, rejected Trump’s demand that they spend 5% of their budget on defense, with Sánchez calling the idea “incompatible with our worldview.” In July, he buddied up with some of Trump’s most prominent critics, including Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva.

Sánchez has also implicitly criticized Trump’s crackdown on immigrants — “Some leaders have chosen to hunt them down and deport them through operations that are both unlawful and cruel,” he wrote in a New York Times essay in February — and called the U.S. abduction of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, a “terrible precedent” that promoted the “law of the jungle.”

For Sánchez, Trump is not only an ideological foe but a useful foil as the prime minister faces growing domestic problems.

Opinion polling shows that Sánchez is seen unfavorably by more than half the country. He controls less than half the seats in the Spanish parliament, hasn’t passed a budget in years, is losing regional elections and enduring corruption scandals. Sánchez has turned to foreign policy “to gain political leverage within Spain,” said Pablo Simón, a political analyst.

Trump’s reaction to Spain’s restrictions on U.S. warplanes, and the global attention it attracted, was “exactly what Sánchez wanted,” said Ramón González Férriz, an author and a columnist at El Confidencial, a Spanish news website. “He has been looking to create an open confrontation with Donald Trump,” who is unpopular in Spain, González Férriz added.