Spain’s socialist exception is running out of time

Unlike most of the European centre left, Sanchez has maintained a traditional socialist stance against the rise in military spending, provoking a furious reaction from many European countries, and especially from United States President Donald Trump. After the Spanish prime minister refused to allocate 3.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to military spending at a NATO summit, Trump threatened Spain in his usual rough style: “We will make you pay double.”

But the military build-up (apparently the only solution of the European elites to exit the continent’s harsh economic crisis) is not the only front that Sanchez has opened against the Trump administration. He asked, in fact, for more rules about the internet and social media. This is a position strongly opposed by Washington, which recently imposed visa sanctions on a former top European Union official and employees of organisations that fight against disinformation for alleged censorship.

Behind the US move, there is obviously no opposition to the alarming drift towards European censorship, but rather the will to protect the monopolistic American web giants. No other socialist party shared Sanchez’s stance, and most of the right’s forces, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government in Italy the most prominent example, are completely subservient to Washington.

The crisis of the European centre left is a crisis that affects the very core of the idea of socialism. Almost all the European socialist parties have undergone a transformation over the last 20 years, a change that has led them towards a substantial liberal politics. Take Keir Starmer in the United Kingdom or Elly Schlein in Italy. They are convinced warmongers regarding Ukraine and are indistinguishable from the liberal parties on economic solutions.