Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced on March 11, 2026, that Spain would permanently recall its ambassador from Israel. Sánchez is an anti-Israel stalwart in a country that is one of Europe’s most antisemitic.
Sánchez condemns Israel’s counterterrorism, but Spain relied on Israel to counter its own Basque terror scourge.
Israeli American scholar Jose Lev Alvarez Gomez notes that Sánchez’s current antagonism toward Israel is hypocritical for two reasons. First, Spain has remained silent on Iran, even as Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Basiji gunmen massacred tens of thousands of Iranians. Sánchez condemns Israel’s counterterrorism, but Spain relied on Israel to counter its own Basque terror scourge and, while Sánchez made political theater out of boycotting Israeli military products, Spain just purchased many of the same from Germany, all containing Israeli components.
Second, while Sánchez was elected against the backdrop of a wide-ranging corruption scandal involving the rival conservative party, Sánchez’s Socialist Party and even his own wife are now subjects of investigation. In effect, Sánchez has become like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: He rose to power promising clean government, and like Erdoğan, he failed to deliver. The parallel continues. When confronted with growing discord, Sánchez, like Erdoğan, sought to distract his base by creating an enemy. Both men chose the Jews.
While Sánchez promotes a morally inverse narrative that sees Israel as the aggressor, the irony is that Israel sits on lands in which Jews are indigenous, but Spain remains a colonial power, running colonies across the Strait of Gibraltar on the northern coast of Morocco.
Spaniards would react with indignation at the suggestion that either Ceuta or Melilla are colonial outposts, but neither maps nor history lie. Ceuta is seven square miles. Its history is one of colonial conquest. In 1415, the Portuguese captured the town. After Spain and Portugal united toward the end of the sixteenth century, Spanish settlers flocked to the town. After the two countries split again, Portugal ceded Ceuta to Spain.
Melilla, slightly smaller at 4.7 square miles, has a similar history. It suffered Spanish conquest in 1497. Madrid has refused to relinquish control ever since. As an expansionist power, Spain joined France in colonizing Morocco in the early twentieth century and finally withdrew from most of the territory it seized in 1956 but refused to budge from its final colonial outposts.
Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio should right another historical wrong and formally recognize Ceuta and Melilla as occupied Moroccan territory.
Sánchez’s left-wing British counterpart Keir Starmer rescinded British claims to the Chagos Islands, and likely will soon do so with the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia on Cyprus, a legacy both of Britain’s colonial era and its now-voided commitment to use the bases to defend the Eastern Mediterranean. At least Starmer is true to his principle; Sánchez is a hypocrite.
President Donald Trump ended his first term by recognizing Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, righting a historical wrong that had chaffed Morocco for decades. As Spain turns against the West and doubles down on anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio should right another historical wrong and formally recognize Ceuta and Melilla as occupied Moroccan territory. Sánchez will not do the right thing voluntarily, but perhaps his legacy nevertheless can become the end of Spanish imperialism in Africa.
