This is the awkward moment Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez posed for a photo with fellow NATO leaders at The Hague.
Footage shared by the Socialist leader on Wednesday showed him shaking the hand of the alliance’s secretary general Mark Rutte upon arriving to the Netherlands.
The PSOE leader is then seen taking his spot on the stage, which seems to be particularly separated from the rest of the leaders, which include the UK’s Sir Keir Starmer and Turkey’s Erdogan.
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Naturally, in centre stage was US President Donald Trump, who has demanded all member states commit 5% of their countries’ GDP to defence spending – a move Sanchez has refused to comply with.
Yesterday, Trump branded Spain a ‘problem’, saying the fact that it would only increase spending to 2.1% as ‘unfair on the rest of the members.’
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Social media users took Sanchez’s position on the stage as a sign that he was being ‘snubbed’ by the alliance.
One X user wrote: ‘Pedro, was standing next to the vases in the NATO photo… a coincidence, or have they already assigned you the decorative role?’
Another said: ‘Pedro, you’ve become the class fool that nobody wants to sit with.’
Others voiced support for the embattled leader, who is dealing with a corruption scandal within his own political party back home.
It comes hours after a Spanish MEP called for Spain to leave NATO during an impassioned statement following the bombing of Iran by the US and Israel.
The clip of Irene Montero, who is the spokeswomen for Spain’s left wing Podemos party, has gone viral on social media.
In it, she criticises EU leaders for failing to call out the US’s ‘illegal’ assault on Iran, insisting there is no evidence that the Middle Eastern nation has a nuclear bomb.
Her statements come before Sanchez was set to sit down with Donald Trump and other world leaders at the NATO summit in The Hague today.
Montero said: ‘We want to make it clear that if the United States can attack Iran illegally, it is because it has Europe as an ally in that aggression.
‘And proof of this is that today both the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ursula von der Leyen and Kaya Kalas, have not condemned this illegal aggression against international law.
‘What they have done has been to ask for de-escalation and containment of the aggressive country and they have reproduced the war propaganda, that is what Mr. Alvarez has done today, together with Ursula von der Leyen and Kaya Kalas, to reproduce the war propaganda that the problem is Iran’s nuclear weapons, when all international organisations, including the United States itself, assure that Iran does not have a nuclear bomb, and the countries that do have it are the two aggressors.’
She continued: ‘Israel has nuclear weapons, the United States has nuclear weapons, and in fact the only country in the world that has ever dared to launch a nuclear bomb has been the United States.
‘This shows that the UN and NATO have never had anything to do with our security, they do not serve to defend us, on the contrary, they put us in danger, the UN and NATO put us in danger, and they serve not to defend us, but for Europe to wage the wars that the fascist Donald Trump orders.
‘That is why we immediately demand from Pedro Sanchez that he prevent any Spanish military base from being used by the United States to continue to attack Iran illegally, or to send military force to Israel in its illegal attacks and in that plan of extermination of the Palestinian people, of course, to practice a total embargo of weapons to the genocides, and to get us out of that criminal alliance that is NATO.
‘We cannot be, Spain cannot be, not a minute more allied to the two greatest dangers of humanity and for world peace at this time.’
