Spanish leaders look for godparents outside: who goes with whom?

MadridIn an era when international politics is at the forefront, Spanish leaders seek godfathers abroad to strengthen themselves internally and try to win the electoral game. The Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, is the one who has the most blatant strategy in this regard, by establishing himself as one of the leaders of the world left this weekend in Barcelona, but also the rest of the political spaces go beyond borders to seek references. These days, the PP and Vox have made a demonstration with the reception of María Corina Machado – whom they use to attack the Spanish government – and a few days ago it was Viktor Orbán's defeat in Hungary that marked Spanish politics.

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Pedro Sánchez

With a complex internal policy –despite the CIS on Tuesday giving them the highest vote projection of the legislature–, the PSOE is playing the international politics card to the fullest. The priority is to forge alliances with Latin America and Europe, as well as to approach China and African countries, in order to reduce dependence on Donald Trump's United States. For this reason, Pedro Sánchez celebrates with effusiveness whenever he can the agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, and this weekend at the progressive summit in Barcelona he ensured that there was representation from the left from all continents.

Who stands out among these allies? The president of Brazil, Lula da Silva; the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro; the former president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, or the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum. It also counts on the Democratic Party of the United States, with a highly applauded intervention by the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, and the mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, via telematics. Montse Mínguez, spokesperson for the PSOE, congratulated herself on Saturday's conclave, and stated that while they meet with "democrats", the PP is responsible for including the ultras in the government of Extremadura, alluding to the PP-Vox understanding.

As for the European lefts, Sánchez counted on the Irish president, Catherine Connolly, as his leading figure, something that according to The Irish Times annoyed the Irish executive, of a neoliberal nature, because it preferred her first visit to be to the United Kingdom. Connolly, like Sánchez, is a politician critical of NATO and who has spoken openly of "genocide" in Gaza. On the other hand, the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, who is a social democrat, was not present, nor was the British prime minister, the laborist Keir Starmer, who sent his deputy prime minister, David Lammy.

Yolanda Díaz

From the summit between Spain and Brazil in Barcelona, a scene stood out that caught the attention: when Pedro Sánchez was parading with Lula da Silva at the Palau de Pedralbes, the Brazilian president skipped protocol to go and greet the Spanish vice president and until recently leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz. This is because she had traditionally been a reference for Sumar and continues to be so despite her rapprochement with the PSOE and the governmental summit in defense of democracy, which Sánchez and Lula da Silva were jointly promoting. It is the same that has happened to the left of the PSOE with Boric or Petro, as Sánchez is monopolizing all international attention.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo

While Sánchez boasts of these alliances, the PP considers that the Spanish president “is on the wrong side of history”, positioning himself alongside “the most radical left in the whole world and with populists”. This was stated this Monday by the number two of the popular party, Miguel Tellado, who vindicated that, in contrast, his party has focused on the “successful” visit of Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado to Spain. The anti-Chavista, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, avoided meeting with the Spanish government and surrounded herself with visible figures from the PP, who in recent days have received her with honors both at the party's national headquarters and at those of the City Council, the Community of Madrid, and the Senate.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, Pedro Rollán, and also the former Spanish president José María Aznar, this very Monday, have held meetings with her. “My affections and preferences, I believe, are very clear,” Machado said at a press breakfast prior to the meeting with the president of FAES, who has become an anti-Sánchez symbol. Precisely, a usual critic of Sánchez within the PSOE, such as the former Spanish executive chief Felipe González, was in charge of introducing Machado at the press breakfast. The fight for ‘freedom’, González stressed, “is not the exclusive property of one ideology”, although in Spain, Machado's has adopted a very specific slant.

Beyond the Venezuelan opposition, which is the most evident case of alignment, Feijóo defends Spain's traditional alliances with the Western world and with the leaders of the European People's Party (EPP). The Spanish PP leader has claimed as his own the recent victory of Péter Magyar in Hungary and, in recent years, has praised the models of other conservative presidents or prime ministers such as the Greek Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Polish Donald Tusk, or the Portuguese Luís Montenegro. The latter was one of the most prominent international guests at the PP congress that re-elected Feijóo last July, along with the leader of the EPP, the German Manfred Weber. The popular party, which has the Church as a traditional ally, sees how the confrontation between Leo XIV and Trump has led to the Pope also being claimed now by the PSOE and the political space to its left.

Santiago Abascal

The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, also met with Machado, but maintaining a much lower profile than the PP. Abascal's alliances are framed within the networks of the global and European far-right, primarily through the formation Patriots for Europe, led by the president of Vox. The most relevant alliance is with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and, therefore, with the president of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Abascal has openly defended despite the attacks on the Palestinian population. In Latin America, the alignment is maximum with the Argentine president, Javier Milei, and there is a good "friendship" with José Antonio Kast, the far-right president of Chile.

Regarding the European alliance, it has lost one of its pillars, the Hungarian Viktor Orbán, but the role of the French Marine Le Pen stands out, although her leadership of the National Rally is also affected by the judicial conviction for embezzlement. Abascal also boasts of friendship with the Italian Giorgia Meloni, despite her having distanced herself from Patriots for Europe and being part of another group in the European Parliament, European Conservatives and Reformists.