“The economy is doing well for them”
“They're the only country that won't pay in full; they want to stay at 2%. I think it's terrible. They're doing very well, their economy is doing very well, and that economy could disappear in a flash if something bad happened.” Donald Trump 's words at the conclusion of the NATO General Assembly in The Hague last Wednesday. The President of the United States has threatened to raise tariffs on Spain and more. Yesterday he reiterated: “Spain didn't comply, but it will. I guarantee it will. It was the only country that tried to resist putting up the money.” There's no precedent for such aggressive language since the Cuban War.
At the end of World War II, President Harry Truman refused to give the order to overthrow General Franco , an ally of Hitler and Mussolini . Stalin raised the issue at the Potsdam Conference in July and August 1945, and met with cold-blooded opposition from the British and Americans. Winston Churchill was completely opposed. He did not want instability below the Pyrenees. He saw no alternative to dictatorship and feared that the communists, the best-organized resistance group, with many cadres with ten years of military experience under their belts, first in the Spanish Civil War and then in the French maquis, would take control of the country. Truman was a little more subtle: "If we intervene, another civil war could break out in Spain. The United States does not want any more wars in Europe." They finally agreed to leave the Franco regime out of the founding assembly of the United Nations in San Francisco, without issuing an ultimatum.
Zapatero won the election after remaining seated during the passing of the US flag in the parade on October 12, 2003, in the midst of the Iraq war.Eight years later, in 1953, the United States government agreed with the Franco regime to open several military bases in Spain: Rota, Morón de la Frontera, Torrejón de Ardoz, Zaragoza, and so on. Spain would remain outside NATO but would remain under the direct protection of the United States, which a few years later would promote the 1959 Stabilization Plan to prevent the collapse of the self-sufficient economy devised by the Falangists. President Dwight Eisenhower , former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Western Europe during World War II, traveled to Madrid that same year, 1959, to seal the protectorate. The man who could have executed the order to overthrow the Spanish dictator in 1945 now greeted him warmly. The Spanish bases were extremely useful for the large American bombers that were to cross the Atlantic. Spain had become a great aircraft carrier. Franco had managed to turn the situation around thanks to the Cold War. He would die in bed in 1975.
After Franco's death, President Gerald Ford , the accidental successor to the resigned Richard Nixon , agreed to the transition plan presented to him by King Juan Carlos . Legalizing the communists was not a dish that Washington liked, but after the revolution in Portugal they did not want to create a plug in Spain. They believed the plan was sound: the reformist party that emerged from within the regime and a rejuvenated PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) under the tutelage of German Social Democracy could guarantee a stable transition, with the communists willing to lend a hand, following the advice of their Italian colleagues, who were seeking a grand national pact with the Christian Democrats. Santiago Carrillo was authorized to travel to the United States in 1978.
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In Washington, however, they became angry with Adolfo Suárez in 1980 when, after his second electoral victory, he constructed the fantasy that he could rival González for the center-left vote. We're talking about the progressive Suárez who embraced Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Madrid and delayed Spain's entry into NATO. At that moment, his problems worsened. Suárez resigned at the end of January 1981, nine days after Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States. A month later, in the early hours of February 24, the US State Department issued a cold statement declaring that the attempted coup in Madrid was "an internal Spanish matter."
Message received. The first thing Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo did after being sworn in as president, replacing Suárez, was to accelerate Spain's entry into NATO, which materialized on May 30, 1982. Felipe González knew from the very beginning—from the very beginning—that the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) could not, in a word, defend Spain's withdrawal from the Atlantic Alliance in the promised referendum. And so it was. González got along well with Reagan and did not hesitate to send three warships to the Red Sea (a frigate and two corvettes) when George W. Bush Sr. launched the First Gulf War to drive the Iraqis out of Kuwait.
During the Catalan crisis in the fall of 2017, Trump did not hesitate to give rapid support to Spain's territorial integrity.José María Aznar could have considered having Spanish troops enter Baghdad in 2003, along with the US military contingent, but he held back at the last minute due to the pressure on the streets. Aznar established a relationship of great complicity with George Bush Jr. His plan was to turn Spain into a second Great Britain, cultivating a special relationship with the United States, distancing himself from the Franco-German axis. More Atlantis than Carolingian. What came next is known to all.
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero won the election after remaining seated during the passing of the American flag during the parade on October 12, 2003, in the midst of the Iraq war. After winning the tragic elections of March 2004, his first decision was to withdraw the Spanish troops stationed in Iraq. The anger in Washington was monumental, but there were no immediate reprisals.
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As compensation, Zapatero sent Civil Guard troops to Haiti to help restore order in that battered country. In May 2010, however, he received a phone call from Barack Obama , his "friendly" president. The champion of democratic oratory urged him to urgently change his economic policy, since Spain's public debt could jeopardize the stability of the eurozone and the entire international financial landscape. Zapatero concluded his second term in 2011 by reaching an agreement with the United States to expand the Rota base, a pact that was later ratified and secured by Mariano Rajoy . (Former Foreign Minister José Manuel García Margallo maintains that Obama's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton , even threatened to move the Rota and Morón bases to Morocco as a result of pent-up anger.)
Rajoy had no problems with the first Trump. During the Catalan crisis in the fall of 2017, the United States government didn't hesitate to swiftly support Spain's territorial integrity. Some misguided Catalan independence supporters even believed that the "disruptive" Trump might support Catalan independence. Not even in their dreams was this the case. Rota and Morón are the most visible names that appear in the Pentagon's map room when one looks at the Iberian Peninsula.
The fury of the world has been unleashed and Sánchez, now seven years into his term, has become the "villain"Rota and Morón are not a game. Therefore, the Biden administration proposed a new expansion of Rota, which Pedro Sánchez ultimately had to address in 2022. Joe Biden 's people disliked the presence of Podemos in the government and wanted greater Spanish alignment with Morocco. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken , a Versailles-style diplomat compared to the current White House team, took a back seat when the Ceuta crisis erupted in May 2021. Sánchez got the message: he dismissed the Minister of Foreign Affairs ( Arancha González Laya ), accepted the Moroccan proposal to turn Western Sahara into an autonomous province (under UN supervision), and agreed to the second expansion of Rota. This explains the success of the NATO General Assembly held in Madrid at the end of July 2022, which concluded with a peaceful evening at the El Prado art gallery. Podemos protested, but only sparingly. It didn't threaten to leave the government, of course. What times!
The world is now different. The fury of the world has been unleashed, and Pedro Sánchez, now seven years into his administration, has become the "villain" of the 2025 general assembly for refusing to return to Madrid with the 5% mark tattooed on his arm. Sánchez is currently risking the stability of his government at a time of great fragility, beset by the Cerdán-Ábalos scandal. The Spanish president was in no condition to actively participate in the phenomenal comedy that was performed this week in The Hague.
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Trump was supposed to achieve a major stage triumph, and in return, he won't withdraw troops from Europe. He's not supposed to. The Europeans nominally agree to increase their military spending to 5% of GDP within ten years, and once that target is agreed upon with great fanfare, everyone should get their act together. The first review of targets is scheduled for 2029. The entire European military industry would have to be reorganized, but no one really explains how. Many European governments cannot meet the 5% commitment without exposing themselves to severe cuts in social spending. They don't believe they can meet that commitment, but the point wasn't to spoil Trump's party. Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte , Secretary General of NATO, made it abundantly clear. The important thing for Trump was to be able to communicate to his constituents in the American heartland that Europeans are going to pay more. Rutte sent him a flattering message with obscene undertones, which Trump immediately made public: "Europe will pay big, as it should, and that will be your triumph."
On the brink of the abyss in Spain, Sánchez couldn't afford that scenario and extracted from Rutte a letter that can be read as a kind of certificate of flexibility. With that letter, Sánchez came to the fore last Sunday announcing that Spain will increase its military spending to 2.1%, 'no more, no less.' And then what happened happened. Why did Rutte grant Sánchez that letter, instead of denying it? That question is key. Why does Rutte agree to draft a letter that can be read as a concession to 'flexibility'? Spain threatened not to sign the assembly's final resolution. And there's another reason: the Morón and Rota bases have played an active role in the US military deployment in the Middle East in recent weeks, and the Spanish government hasn't put up any resistance. Spain remains a major US aircraft carrier. And the Pentagon knows it.
Meloni, of the Brothers of Italy party, heir to the former post-fascist Italian Social Movement, is preparing a cavalry charge against Sánchez.Sánchez hasn't broken NATO, nor has he blocked the Rota and Morón bases at a decisive moment, but he has altered Trump's stage production in The Hague. The president of the United States is now showing anger. Things are going to happen. The "threat" of moving the Rota and Morón bases to Morocco is likely to reappear. Just yesterday, Robert Greenway , director of the Allison Center for National Security, a division of the Heritage Foundation, wrote on the X network: "It's time to relocate the Rota and Morón bases to Morocco." The ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation is the author of Project 2025, which largely inspires the Trump presidential program. Greenway is no minor figure. He worked on the National Security Council and cooperated in the implementation of the Abraham Accords between Israel and some Sunni Arab countries. He conducted intelligence work in Afghanistan and commanded special operations units in Iraq.
Today we also have news from Italy. Giorgia Meloni 's party, Brothers of Italy, heir to the former Italian Social Movement (a post-fascist party founded in 1946), is preparing a cavalry charge against Sánchez, reports Francesco Olivo from Rome. Trump threatens Spain, and the Italian right points to Sánchez as "a risk to Europe" in a statement sent to its parliamentarians. They are trying to stem the heated debate unfolding in that country over defense spending. The Italian left is holding up Sánchez as an example to follow. The debate could spread to other countries.
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Final note. “ People are increasingly aware of the huge amount of money that goes into the pockets of the merchants of death. With that money, schools and hospitals could be built, instead of destroyed .” Who uttered those words? Who is the “demagogue” who dares to question rearmament in this way? Pope Leo XIV . His speech was given this week at the Vatican during a meeting with the Eastern Churches, while Trump, angrily, pointed the finger at Spain in The Hague: “You’re going to pay, you’re going to pay, you’re going to pay...”
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