Spain’s left-wing Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez just banned American warplanes from Spanish airspace and declared our military operations in Iran “profoundly illegal and profoundly unjust.” This is the same guy who needed Morocco — *Morocco!* — to bail him out with emergency electricity after his entire power grid face-planted back in April. But sure, lecture us about legality, Pedro.
Somebody get this man a mirror and a flashlight. The country that has spent below NATO’s recommended defense budget for over a decade now wants to play moral hall monitor for the entire Western world. How do you say “delusional” in Spanish?
Here’s what actually happened. Spain’s Defence Minister Margarita Robles announced Monday that the American bases at Rota and Morón are completely off-limits for Iran operations. Every single US flight plan related to the conflict has been rejected — “all of them, including refuelling aircraft,” Sánchez bragged, like a chihuahua that just chased a delivery truck off the block.
So now American planes have to fly all the way around Spain like it’s a restricted zone in a video game — out over the Atlantic, down the coast, loop back through the Strait of Gibraltar — adding hours to every mission. All because Pedro has feelings about international law.
Here’s where it gets absolutely beautiful. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was so moved by Pedro’s “brave stand” that they started slapping his face on ballistic missiles aimed at Israel. Not a joke. The Iranian state news agency Tasnim published video of a “thank you sticker” — Sánchez’s own words — plastered right on the side of a missile, next to the hashtag “Wipe Israel out of existence.”
Congratulations, Pedro! You made the side of a terrorist missile. That’s one way to get your face on something famous.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry twisted the knife: “How does it feel knowing your face and words are on these missiles? Keep in mind that Europe — including Spain — is within range of these missiles.” Spanish opposition leader Ester Muñoz piled on and called it what every sane person was already thinking: “There can be no greater dishonour.”
But Pedro doesn’t do dishonor. Pedro does coalition management. See, he runs a minority government propped up by a grab bag of communists and people who want to secede from Spain — none of whom want to spend a dime on things like a functioning military. Or a functioning electrical grid.
(Spoiler alert: they can’t manage either one.)
Let’s revisit that beautiful moment on April 28th when Spain’s entire power system went belly-up at lunchtime. Sixty million people across Spain and Portugal lost electricity for anywhere from 10 to 20 hours. The grid shed 15 gigawatts of generation capacity in what engineers call a “cascading failure” and what normal people call “we forgot how electricity works.”
And who rode to the rescue? The Kingdom of Morocco pumped 900 megawatts of emergency power through an undersea cable to keep Spain from descending into total chaos. A North African country literally kept the lights on for a NATO member state. But we’re supposed to take foreign policy advice from these people.
Now let’s talk about the freeloading, because it is absolutely spectacular. Spain spends a pathetic 1.28% of GDP on defense. Last place. Dead last among NATO members. When the alliance raised the spending target to 5% of GDP by 2035, every single member agreed except one. Take a wild guess.
Sánchez personally wrote a letter to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte calling the goal “unreasonable and counterproductive” and begged himself a special exemption to cap spending at a whopping 2.1%. Meanwhile, Poland is hitting 4.7% this year. Poland! A country that shares a border with the actual threat and still manages to outspend Spain by a factor of nearly four. Spain shares a border with beach resorts and still can’t be bothered to chip in.
President Trump’s response was vintage Trump: “We are going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don’t want anything to do with Spain.” He called them “terrible” and said Madrid wanted to “travel for free” on defense. He even floated NATO expulsion — which, honestly, what exactly would we lose? A country that can’t power its own toasters?
Trump also pointed out the obvious about those bases: “We could use their base if we want, we could just fly in and use it, nobody’s going to tell us not to use it.” Pedro pretends he’s standing on principle. Trump reminded him who actually built and maintains those installations.
Karoline Leavitt let slip at one point that Madrid had actually agreed to cooperate with US military operations behind closed doors. Spanish officials denied it faster than you can say “coalition crisis.” So Pedro’s playing both sides — tough guy for the communists back home, “yes sir” behind closed doors when the grown-ups are in the room. (He wouldn’t be the first European “leader” to pull that trick.)
So let’s recap. Spain contributes almost nothing to the alliance, can’t keep its own electricity running for a full afternoon, depends on American military infrastructure for its national security, and now wants to grandstand about the legality of our foreign policy — while Iran literally pastes Pedro’s face on the side of missiles as a thank-you card.
Fix the power grid first, Pedro. Then maybe — *maybe* — we’ll pretend to care what you think about international law.
—
