Spain’s prime minister skips Trump’s UNGA reception as tensions with Washington deepen and pressure mounts over Morocco.
Ever since Volodymyr Zelensky was ambushed and humiliated in the Oval Office, world leaders have learned to keep their distance from Donald Trump when relations turn sour. Or at least, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has. Last night, he skipped the traditional reception the US president hosts for world leaders at the opening of the UN General Assembly’s high-level week.
Spain is, for Trump, “a wasted cause.” In July, the US president said he didn’t want “anything to do with Spain” and announced he was cutting off “all trade, including visits.” As fate would have it, he had to hand Spain the World Cup trophy just days later. That probably only fed his fury. So it’s fair to ask whether Sánchez was invited at all. Moncloa assured Envoy that he was, but said the invitation only arrived last Wednesday. By then, a spokesperson said, the agenda was already full, and the prime minister had a private commitment. That commitment never appeared on his public schedule.
Sánchez did find time for Christiane Amanpour and Jon Stewart ahead of his speech today at the UNGA. The way he answered their questions about Trump left little doubt that he had no plans to meet him face to face. He was already on Trump’s bad side. He declined to join the so-called Board of Peace for the Middle East. He wouldn’t commit to spending 5% of GDP on defense, as the other NATO members did. And he denied the US the use of Spanish airspace and military bases to attack Iran.
Yesterday, he didn’t make things any better. When Stewart asked about Trump’s speech to the General Assembly, Sánchez called it “a very ideological speech, not backed and supported by facts and data.”
That doesn’t mean Madrid will waste the diplomatic opportunity this week offers. Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares announced that he will meet his Moroccan counterpart, Nasser Bourita, in New York. It will be their first meeting since July 30, when the border at Ceuta gave way. Tens of thousands of people crossed from Morocco in a matter of hours, and more than a hundred died, drowned off the breakwaters or crushed against the fences. Seven weeks later, thousands are still waiting in a city that can’t hold them, and there are calls for another mass crossing.
On Tuesday morning, for the first time, Sánchez publicly pointed at Rabat. “We have asked Morocco for actions and also for answers,” he told CNN’s Amanpour, “because it is also clear that its border control failed.” In the next breath, he turned to the relationship: the strategic partnership and the need to return most of those migrants to Morocco.
The opposition says Sánchez skipped Trump’s party so that nobody would talk about Ceuta. In fact, it was a calculated move. The UN’s 81st General Assembly, where he speaks today, gives him the perfect cover for the conversations he urgently needs to have. Sánchez can afford to stay away from Trump. But he can’t afford to fail with Morocco.
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