In the middle of April, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez summoned the world’s leftist statesmen to Barcelona for what he called a Global Progressive Mobilization. There are not many leftist statesmen to choose from these days. But Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico and Lula of Brazil rallied round Sánchez, and so did the representatives of activist philanthropies—Bill Gates’s people and George Soros’s, too. Various agitators came for environmental and sexual causes, with their earrings and keffiyehs and polyglot t-shirts.

It was a coronation of sorts. Through an assiduous campaign of policy-shaping, speech-making, China-courting, and Trump-trolling, Sánchez has managed to identify himself to many non-Spaniards as the leader of the global opposition. What Trump explores, Sánchez deplores. Boss of the Socialist Workers’ Party of Spain (PSOE) with only a brief interruption since 2014, prime minister since 2018, and president of the Socialist International since 2022, Sánchez was accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza within weeks of the 2023 Hamas attacks. In 2025 he repudiated the promise of other NATO leaders to increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP. This past January, as the Trump Administration’s ICE arrests in Minnesota brought global opprobrium, Sánchez publicized a plan to give amnesty to half a million migrants. And he has been prominent