Why Spain Is Opposing Israel And The Us Over Gaza And Iran

TITLE: Why Spain is opposing Israel and the US over Gaza and Iran | Explained CHANNEL: TRT World DATE: 2026-04-15 ---TRANSCRIPT--- This is an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being torched in a Spanish village. Angered by the effigy incident and Spain’s continued opposition to Israel’s military campaigns, Netanyahu had something to say.

In the 2 and 1/2 years since October 7th, 2023, Spain has become one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s ongoing genocidal war on Palestine’s Gaza, and Spain hasn’t minced words on the US-Israeli war on Iran, either.

Within 24 hours of the initial unprovoked airstrikes on Iran, February 28th, 2026, coordinated between the US and Israel, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gave a televised national address calling the attack unjustifiable, dangerous, and outside international law.

On March 2nd, Sanchez declared that Spain would bar US forces from using its Rota and Morón military bases for any offensive operations linked to the war, bases the Pentagon has been using since 1953. The Spanish Prime Minister called the strikes a violation of international law, and on March 30th, Spain closed its airspace to US planes involved in the strikes on Iran.

“Maybe you should throw them out of NATO, frankly.”

The confrontation drew attention across Europe because Spain is not a small peripheral country. On the contrary, it is an EU and NATO member and home to two of the alliance’s most strategically significant military installations. Sanchez’s move was not the first time Spain has taken this kind of anti-war stance. To understand the Spanish government’s decision, we need to look back at the country’s history.

On March 11th, 2004, 10 bombs detonated across four commuter trains in the Spanish capital, Atocha, El Pozo, and Santa Eugenia. 193 people were killed. Nearly 2,000 were wounded. The attacks came 3 days before a general election. Then Prime Minister José María Aznar initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA, Basque Homeland and Liberty, for the bombings. Within hours, investigators identified Al-Qaeda-linked individuals as the perpetrators.

The attacks were later linked in part to individuals who had been radicalized due to the US-led invasion of Iraq. Aznar had committed Spanish troops to that illegal invasion in 2003, despite polls showing that around 90% of the public was opposed to the war, and despite a protest in Madrid that had drawn an estimated 3 million people, one of the largest in the country’s history.

3 days after the bombings, Aznar’s party lost the election. The incoming Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq within weeks of taking office.

“That backfired. That blew up in their faces right away because it was very clear within 24 hours that it had not been ETA, but it had been some group related to Al-Qaeda. 2 days after the attack, there were elections that the Aznar was poised to win, and he lost because people just the electorate did not accept such an obvious attempt at being hoodwinked about the attacks. And you could also say that the defeat of Aznar in the immediate aftermath of those 2004 attacks in a way was electoral payback for his decision to buck public opinion in 2003 and join the attack on Iraq.”

Spain’s relationship with the US military dates back to the mid-20th century. General Francisco Franco’s regime, which had cooperated with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, faced international isolation following the end of World War II, and in 1946, months after the war had culminated, the United Nations voted to recommend that member states withdraw their ambassadors from Madrid. In 1953, Franco negotiated a way through that isolation. Under the Pact of Madrid, Spain agreed to host four US military bases in Zaragoza, Morón de la Frontera, Rota, and Torrejón de Ardoz. In return, Washington would provide Spain with economic aid, military equipment, and diplomatic rehabilitation. The agreement kept Franco’s government afloat during a period when most of Europe had shut its doors to Spain. For the US, Madrid offered strategic positioning on the edge of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic during the Cold War.

The bases built in 1953 are still there. Rota, on Spain’s southern Atlantic coast, remains one of NATO’s most significant naval installations, and the same base Sanchez barred from being used for offensive purposes in March 2026.

Franco’s isolation also pushed Spain toward a different set of relationships. Spain’s historical connection to the Arab and Muslim world spans many centuries. From 711 to 1492, much of the Iberian Peninsula was under Muslim rulers, from the Umayyad Caliphate to the Almoravids, then the Almohads, and finally Nasrid Kingdom of Granada. That’s eight centuries of Muslim rule. The architecture of Seville and Córdoba still stands as a reminder of that period. Thousands of Spanish words have Arabic roots. The names of many Spanish rivers, including the Guadalquivir and the Guadiana, derive directly from Arabic.

In 1969, Spain formally recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization. It was among the first Western countries to do so. Diplomatic support and trade with Arab countries helped Spain re-enter international trade networks after years of exclusion.

“But that’s a mix of pragmatism, opportunism, and some genuine retelling of their own national history. Spain was not a colonial power in the Middle East. It had an easier time. It was, of course, a colonial power in North Africa, in Morocco in particular. It has proven advantageous for Spain politically and economically to maintain good relationships with the Arab world and to distinguish itself within the West for the smoothness with which it has been able to deal with the Middle East. And you could say the elegance with which it has managed to not get caught up in the Israeli-Arab conflict, right? So to by presenting itself as the mediator, as the peace broker.”

Spain’s anti-war stance also stems from another conflict, one that remains deeply traumatic in Spanish public life. From 1936 to 1939, a civil war in Spain killed up to 500,000 people. Franco’s nationalist forces, backed by Nazi Germany’s Condor Legion and Mussolini’s air force, defeated the elected Republican government. Thousands more were executed, imprisoned, or disappeared in the years that followed. Mass graves were dug across the country.

When Franco died in 1975, Spain transitioned into a democracy. It was built on a political agreement to set aside the crimes of the Franco period. Archives were sealed, and no prosecutions were made. Historians refer to this as the Pacto del Olvido, the pact of forgetting. Decades later, however, families are still identifying remains of relatives in unmarked graves across the country.

“This experience of urban bombing, of massive civilian casualties, the memory of that is quite present. It’s not a coincidence that Picasso’s Guernica still stands as kind of an iconic image of the anti-war movement. And then the memory of immigration, the memory of urban bombing, the memory of what it means to be a refugee is quite present still. In the ’90s already, Spain shaped itself as a pioneer in international law. So the indictment in 1998 of Augusto Pinochet when he was visiting London by a Spanish magistrate judge, and then in the years following the role that Spanish courts played invoking universal jurisdiction in the indictments of political leaders all around the world for crimes against humanity or suspected crimes against humanity, really put Spain on the front lines of international law and turned that role into a point of pride for Spaniards as well. Ironically, because, like you said, at the same time, Spain never really was able to deal judicially with the crimes committed by the Franco regime.”

Fast forward to 2018, Pedro Sanchez came to power and Spain’s foreign policy began to move in a recognizable direction. Under his leadership, Spain deepened its ties with Latin American countries and positioned itself as a partner to global South countries rather than restricting its diplomacy to the traditional Western Alliance framework.

Sanchez’s positioning on Israel’s genocidal war on Palestine’s Gaza was one of the main features that brought him and his country into the spotlight. As the prime minister and his government adopted an anti-war and pro-Palestine stance. While most Western powers were repeating Israel’s right to self-defense and condemning pro-Palestinian voices. In May 2024, Spain formally recognized Palestinian statehood joining Ireland and Norway. Sanchez also used the word genocide to describe Israel’s military campaign in Palestine’s Gaza.

It was an early use of the term by a European head of state with many Western leaders still refusing to acknowledge it as such despite the conclusions of most human rights organizations and genocide experts.

Spain also called on the EU to review its trade deal with Israel. In June 2024, Spain also joined South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice against Israel. And in July, the country’s national court opened a war crimes probe into Netanyahu over the illegal raiding of the Madeline aid ship sailing to Gaza in June 2025.

This was followed by Spain’s decision at the June 2025 NATO summit to reject the alliance’s proposed 5% of GDP defense spending target. A stance Sanchez framed in terms of prioritizing development aid and multilateral institutions over the procurement of weapons. Then in September 2025, the Spanish Parliament approved a full arms embargo on Tel Aviv banning weapons, military technology, and dual-use equipment from being purchased from or sold to Israel. Washington made its displeasure over the arms embargo very clear. Israeli officials summoned Spain’s ambassadors.

Several EU partners raised concerns about the pace and direction of Spain’s position on Israel and Gaza, but Spain didn’t budge.

On March 11, just weeks after the US and Israel launched their coordinated war on Iran, the Spanish government formally withdrew its ambassador to Israel in what is seen by analysts as the culmination of a two-year escalation between Madrid and Tel Aviv.

“I could tomorrow stop or today even better stop everything having to do with Spain. All business having to do with Spain. I have the right to stop it. Embargoes, do anything I want with it and we may do that with Spain. What do you think?”

Meanwhile, Trump’s threat of a trade embargo on Madrid was legally difficult to deliver since Spain does not have an autonomous trade policy with the US, but is rather part of a wider trade agreement with Washington via its membership in the European Union.

“Pedro Sanchez probably is he has incentives to continue this path because it’s very difficult for US to punish Spain from the economic point of view, trade point of view with tariffs is very difficult because Spain is part of the European Union.”

Sanchez has the backing of his people against the actions of US President Trump. Even before the war, YouGov polling from December 2025 showed 77% of Spaniards viewed Trump unfavorably. A poll conducted by the Center for Sociological Research in early March 2026 showed 69% of Spaniards opposed the war on Iran. On those measures, Sanchez’s position aligns closely with public opinion.

“Every self-respecting Spaniard balks at the idea that a country like the United States would infringe on its sovereignty. Sanchez is a very smart politician. He’s tactically brilliant. So, what he did very quickly within Spain first in the wake of the Gaza genocide and more recently in the wake of the attack on Iran was to maneuver in such a way that he basically played his pieces leaving the right in checkmate. He maneuvered them into a corner very smartly. Sort of leaving the leaders of the PP and of the far-right Vox party as basically traitors to their own country because they were aligned with a president who not only had illegally attacked Iran together with Israel, but also threatening to illegally attack Spain. There is many that see now within Europe that are happy or that are commenting positively on the fact that somebody speaks out against the bully that Spain shows integrity for its foreign policy stances and doesn’t back away.”

Spain is not a pacifist country. It is a NATO member. It has troops on international missions. It has signed the same collective security commitments as its allies. What sets Spain apart from most other Western powers is embedded in its history. A history that is culminated in its anti-war stance. A civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of its own people. A democratic transition built on silence surrounding those crimes. A terrorist attack in 2004 that killed 193 commuters linked in part to a war the public had opposed from the start. And a 1953 agreement that placed US military bases on its soil in exchange for legitimacy given to a dictatorship. Whether Madrid’s position on the Iran war holds and what it means for how European governments navigate the gap between alliance obligations and independent judgments as well as national interests is a question that extends beyond Spain.

“I do think that Spain is poised to play a pioneering role in that development because it’s not only about autonomy or independence or not being beholden to one of the great powers. It’s also about representing a more ethical, a more rules-based position, right? It’s about the continued or the reaffirmation of principles of international law, especially national sovereignty. And so I can see that happening. I think also because Spain has been working its intermediary role for decades now. Not just vis-a-vis the Middle East as we talked about, but also vis-a-vis Latin America because the other kind of hinge position that Spain sort of convincingly adopted after its transition to democracy was to be the intermediate between Europe and Latin America. And that’s something that just like the Middle East, the left and the right in Spain agree on and embrace. So, I think for those reasons, Spain could be a leader in a new kind of non-aligned movement of middle countries. I think so.”