Sánchez, at the gates of the gayola with Trump, strains NATO and surprises Europe.

Trapped by a terrible reputational crisis for the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, threatened by the risk of the legislature collapsing—this time, yes— Pedro Sánchez has positioned himself at the gayola gate, kneeling on the ground, waiting for the Trump bull to come out of the NATO ring.
He's a robust, massive bull, weighing over 600 kilos, with a ring in his nose, red-faced and furious, fearsome, eager for battle. Sánchez extends his cape in front of the bullpen door, shouting: "I'm not going to pay you 5%!" Eyes wide open in the presidential box. A voice with a German accent exclaims: "This Spaniard has gone crazy!" An Italian woman nervously pulls at her hair.
This will be the week of NATO, the harsh war in Iran, and the possible Constitutional Court ruling on the Amnesty Law. All of Spanish politics is currently on the chopping block. The government could be blown to bits, and the main opposition party could end up with a broken rib. Vox is already approaching sixty seats in the polls.
The Podemos effect of 2015 would be the Vox effect in 2025. The libertarian youth are no longer calling for storming the skies. They're calling for investing in cryptocurrencies and storming Social Security so that retirees are no longer society's comfort zone. Fewer pensions, fewer public hospitals, lower minimum wages, and whoever falls, wake up. The serious reputational crisis of the PSOE and the hubbub of the disunited left could open a huge gap in Spanish politics at a time of major reconfiguration of the European stage. Everything hangs by a thread. The United States began bombing Iran this morning. The step has been taken. The US command affirms that B-2 stealth bombers have managed to destroy the three Iranian uranium enrichment facilities buried in the northern mountains, by dropping 13-ton heavy bombs. Israel rejoices. Trump will arrive in The Hague dressed as an emperor and will look with contempt at the Spaniard who wants to contradict him.
Sánchez decides to confront Trump, plagued by his serious internal problems in Spain.Foreign policy and domestic policy always form a dialectical unity. No one knows what might happen in Eurasia if the war in Iran drags on, once the proponents of a definitive attack on the ayatollahs' regime have gained the upper hand within the US administration. The MAGA movement faces hardline realists, who favor cutting corners and then focusing on containing China. The MAGA movement didn't want to take that step. "Americans first," they keep repeating. No one knows what the reaction of the Russians and Chinese will be. The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is already near the Strait of Hormuz. B-2 bombers have taken off from the Guam base in the western Pacific. This week, the Morón de la Frontera air base (Seville) was the most used base in Europe by the United States Air Force to send tanker aircraft to the Middle East.
The world is at a very dangerous crossroads. And at that crossroads, the Spanish president, facing serious internal difficulties, decides to summon the Trump bull at the NATO general assembly, which begins Tuesday in The Hague. The first snorts have already been heard: "NATO will have to deal with Spain, which has always paid very little," Trump said.
There's Sánchez, at the gates, searching for an electoral platform if elections are to be held in a few months. The Popular Party, which is concerned with military spending, doesn't want to talk. Alberto Núñez Feijóo 's PP, the Romay Beccaría school, the Mineral school that preaches calm, only talks about the scandal. It's waiting for Sánchez to fall, overwhelmed by the Koldo and Ábalos audio recordings and by the fury of the times.
Spain will struggle to find allies in the European Union and may face rejection from Germany.Foreign policy and domestic policy. Nobody knows what will happen in Iran in the coming weeks and months, and nobody knows what will eventually emerge from the audio recordings confiscated by the Civil Guard. We could be facing a Villarejo II. Nobody knows how many more papers they can find for Santos Cerdán . Nobody knows if the PSOE's Organization Secretariat was embedded in Acciona, or if it was Acciona that was embedded in the PSOE's Organization Secretariat. Nobody knows what Civil Guard General Manuel Sánchez Corbí , the former head of the UCO (Union of the Workers' Union) who four years ago joined Acciona as head of security, knew. An officer trained at the Intxaurrondo barracks, he was sentenced in 1997 to one year in prison and six years of disqualification for the crime of torturing an ETA detainee; pardoned by the Aznar government in 1999. A man of weight, Sánchez Corbí. A man with good connections within the PP. Wasn't Cerdán worried when he heard about this signing four years ago? Why didn't he leave Acciona? Apparently, he didn't. He continued his activities in cooperation with Koldo García , who was also pardoned by the Aznar government in 1996 after being convicted of assault. Koldo was also decorated in 2018 by the PP government with the white cross of the Civil Guard for his collaboration in the fight against ETA. Cerdán had co-opted him for the Navarrese PSOE, for Sánchez's Peugeot campaign, and for his businesses, as has now emerged. A mysterious character, Cerdán, the man of impossible missions. They trusted him, and now we have Sánchez at the gates.
The Italian woman nervously pulling at her hair is Giorgia Meloni . As Rome correspondent Francesco Olivo reports today in La Vanguardia , the Italian government had anticipated the possibility of a certain strategic convergence with Spain to challenge the 5% target, through a combination of gradualism, alliances, and cunning. It meant postponing the deadlines and expanding the concepts that could be classified as "military spending." The Italian government is considering classifying the construction of a gigantic bridge across the Strait of Messina to link the peninsula with the island of Sicily as defense spending, a pharaonic project that has been the subject of passionate discussion in Italy for years. Let's imagine that Spain decides to build a suspension bridge over the Strait of Gibraltar—or an underwater tunnel—and endorses it to NATO as a defensive expenditure of great strategic value.
Sánchez's close calls have thwarted those plans. The Spanish president and Meloni met, without informing the press, during the European summit held on May 16 in Tirana (Albania). Sánchez wanted to ask Meloni for support for the recognition of Catalan, Basque, and Galician in the European Union, but he didn't get it. But at that discreet Albanian meeting, other issues were discussed: the European budget and defense spending. The Italians now watch in horror as Sánchez summons Trump with a cape. They can't possibly adopt the same position, given that Meloni would like to be the United States' preferred ally in Europe. The government in Rome now fears that the European countries most in favor of increased military spending will adopt more rigid positions. Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, and almost all the Scandinavian countries are strengthening their militaries with an eye on Russia. They may be eager to tighten the screws on southern Europe.
The Italians had sounded out a certain tactical alliance with Spain against the 5% without much noise.With the "no" vote on the 5% threshold at the center of the bullring, Sánchez can revive the discouraged socialist electoral base—it will be very difficult for the PSOE to re-engage the young people who these days are reading the shocking story of the pimps who took commissions—and he can lay the groundwork for the 2026 budget, which would be the real issue of confidence. He can use it as a banner to get out of the quagmire, if there is a way out. He can try to calm Yolanda Díaz , who has already panicked. He can write the first point of an emergency electoral platform, which another candidate would surely have to defend. He can defy fate, in short, but he could also end up isolated within the European Union, further than ever from the new dominant axis: Germany-France-Poland, with the external support of the United Kingdom. The issue of military spending does not refer exclusively to the bilateral relationship with the United States. Today, it is a nuclear issue for the European Union, when we already know that the Americans have decided to go to war with Iran. This morning, a historic turning point occurred, the consequences of which are still unknown.
The Strait of Hormuz returns. Adolfo Suárez saw his weaknesses exacerbated in 1980 when he decided to embrace Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat , while delaying Spain's entry into NATO. He was in no hurry. He wanted to appear progressive. He wanted to defeat Felipe González for the third time. In 1980, Iran and Iraq, at war, began to hinder oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf. Twenty percent of global oil and gas trade passes through this strait, frequented by Sinbad the Sailor in Arabian Nights . Inflation spiked. Suárez resigned in January 1981 under threat of a coup d'état. What will happen in the Strait of Hormuz in the coming weeks?
Felipe González knew from day one that he couldn't leave NATO. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero knew he had to change his economic policy the day Barack Obama called him to warn him that Spain's public debt could jeopardize the stability of the euro. May 2010.
Pedro Sánchez has put himself at odds with the NATO General Assembly in 2025, the year of the Iran war, to try to prevent the PSOE from suffering the same sad fate as Bettino Craxi 's Italian Socialist Party.
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