In an evasive address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez cast himself as the victim of international reactionary forces while claiming to be a champion of globalist socialism.
Taking to the U.N. podium on Wednesday afternoon — after refusing to meet with host President Donald Trump — Prime Minister Sánchez attempted to deflect blame for the major border control failure that was the mass invasion of illegal migrants from Morocco into Spain’s North African exclave city of Ceuta at the end of July.
While he candidly admitted in an interview with CNN prior to his speech that Rabat’s border protocols had “failed” prior to the invasion of over 70,000 aliens in a day, the Socialist leader did not even mention Morocco in his speech to the international community, instead blaming factors out of government control like “inequality, desperation, and misinformation”.
“I know that in times like these the temptation is to take the shortcut, to give in to fear, to turn migrants into enemies and violate the law. But Spain will not do that. And neither will Ceuta,” he said per ABC.
“Spain is not choosing the easiest path; it is choosing the fairest path. The whole world knows it,” Sánchez continued. “And the reactionary forces that want to destroy the multilateral order keep attacking us for it. They want us to cower, they want us to surrender.”
“Well, I am here to tell them, loud and clear, that they are wrong and that we will not be silenced. We Spaniards will not take a step backwards. We will not stop believing that humanity can continue to progress and that, together, we can build a better world.”
In addition to flexing his open-borders bona fides, Sánchez also bared his globalism during his U.N. address, calling for the elimination of the veto power of the five permanent members of the Security Council: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
“No country should be both judge and jury, no matter how powerful it may be,” he argued.
In a thinly veiled reference to U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, the Spanish PM complained of “reactionary entities and governments that want to drag us back to a dark past.”
“We all know who they are and what their modus operandi is,” he said, claiming that they have a “planned and coordinated attempt to demolish” multilateralism for the sake of “selfishness,” “ignorance,” and “cruelty.”
While Sánchez has often relied upon his combative relationship with President Trump to distract from a myriad of scandals at home, it is unclear how effective returning to that playbook will be as he seeks to dig himself out of the public relations hole dug by the migrant crisis in Ceuta.
With even the government reportedly expecting thousands of illegals to remain within the city until next year, the scandal, and the failures of the socialist government to prevent it, are likely set to dominate the headlines in Madrid during the lead-up to the 2027 general election, which his conservative and populist rivals are currently on pace to handily win.