Spain’s Socialist Collapse Is America’s Warning

Americans who remember when NATO allies were expected to defend the West—not undermine it—should pay close attention to what is happening in Spain. Pity perfidious Pedro Sánchez, prime minister of Spain and, yes, leader of the PSOE, or Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. His ideology is the most important thing to know about him. It sickens him like a debilitating disease.

New accounts show that 70,000 illegal immigrants tried to storm into Ceuta, a Spanish city on the coast of Morocco. Ninety-eight of those young African men perished, drowning in the sea.

The last time this many Moroccans entered Spain against the ostensible wishes of Madrid—ninety years ago to the day—General Francisco Franco was mobilizing the Ejército de África in a successful effort to depose the Second Spanish Republic.

Thus ended the troubles of the Spanish Civil War, preventing the final stage of Leon Trotsky’s “Export the Revolution” foreign policy, which was designed to turn countries like Spain into Stalinist satrapies through artificially created strife and terrorism.

Sadly, Franco’s forces arrived too late to save Spain from being robbed of five centuries’ worth of gold, which swiftly made its way to Moscow. It is most likely now held by the same people who made off with the rest of the Soviet Empire’s crown jewels, including most of the Rembrandts on public view in the Hermitage in Leningrad—fortunately renamed St. Petersburg after the fall of the “evil empire.”

Sánchez has dwelled greatly on these historical events during his painful and turbulent eight years in power. Franco’s bones were disturbed by a presidential decree ordering their removal from the monument where he rested. Perhaps the Generalissimo’s ghost was once again at the head of the column, leading the charge against internationalist left-wingery.

Saving Spain from the fate that befell the Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact was apparently no guarantee of an eternal resting place, nor even protection from the Bourbon monarchy Franco restored to the Spanish head of state—one last gasp of the original, Napoleonic-era right-left divide.

Now the state administered by King Mohammed VI of Morocco—whose divine right of kings stems from his claim of direct descent from a certain prophet with whom he shares a name—might find a longer-term arrangement than his opposite number, Felipe VI of Spain, has been able to sustain for General Franco’s disturbed remains.

Perfidious Pedro, who wants to ban bullfighting and runs from accountability, has repeatedly managed to draw the attention of the entire world, striking yet again at the heart of the European Union’s fault lines—in this case, the Schengen Agreement’s open borders between EU members. The agreement is blatantly not working. The invasion episode of last week is evidence on full display. Islamic immigration and the lack of assimilation have become the bugbear of much of Europe.

Will the other 26 still semi-sovereign countries accept Spain’s open border with Morocco? Giorgia Meloni’s Rome led the charge in suspending Spanish passports from the privileges afforded under Schengen—a policy rapidly copied by half a dozen other EU members, including even Macron’s France. Such an Italian-led coalition was always destined to surface on this and several other issues, absent the necessary banishment of socialist ideology from political decision-making in Brussels.

For all his faults, the worst thing about Pedrito has always been his presidency of the Socialist International, an umbrella organization of worldwide ne’er-do-wells that has managed to lose every important capital in Europe through the trademark mismanagement, grift, and graft that characterize its mode of governance. “Take, Not Make” could be its slogan.

Madrid remains the only exception, though not for want of rejection by the Spanish voting population. Knocking the Party of European Socialists out of power in Madrid would do more to fix Europe than almost any other imaginable change. In the last election, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español, or PSOE, won fewer seats in parliament and fewer votes overall than its opposite number, the Partido Popular, or PP. Yet it managed to stay in power through a “confidence and supply” arrangement with the bloodstained successor to a Basque terrorist party and other regional separatist parties, all of which extracted their pound of flesh. If this sounds mildly similar to what happened in Canada with Carney, it should.

From this greatly weakened position, no national budget has been passed for multiple fiscal years. All legislation that does pass is, without exception, quite terrible and accompanied by the unending graft essential to keeping the whole arrangement going. Danegeld must be paid again and again, vote after vote, to parties that hate the country they ostensibly serve.

The thievery during the pandemic was especially egregious, as any reader of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom might have expected. Emergency powers mean emergency loans, which mean stuffing political pockets with as much money, and in as much of a hurry, as is humanly possible.

Sánchez’s wife turned up with multiple bank accounts, some in dodgy places, along with companies and a passport from the Dominican Republic—granted by presidential decree, no less. Spain’s Air Force One flew dozens of times on nonofficial business to places such as Punta Cana, with no passenger manifests or explanation from Moncloa, Spain’s executive branch. Dirty business, with ties to bad actors in Venezuela and Cuba to boot.

One can only imagine the kinds of beans being spilled by our friend Nicolás Maduro, now under detention in New York City. Indeed, the day before the Moroccans overran Spanish territory—with help from Soros-backed NGOs and China’s TikTok—President Sánchez decreed a presidential pardon for the first of his cronies who was meant to report to prison for taking a five-finger discount on public funds. A coincidence, if there ever was one.

Pedro is corrupt beyond measure and a hard-core socialist who cares less about economic growth than about redistribution—especially redistribution to himself and his cronies. Familiar? This is why Trump cannot stomach the man and loathes his actions across the board. Spain, which houses U.S. bases, will not let us use them in wartime. What?

It plays tricks with U.S. diplomacy on every front, from multilateralism and tariffs to terrorism, and parades itself as morally superior when the results it has produced are feeble or far worse.

On immigration, open borders produce chaos. We all know that, while socialists never seem to learn. Spain is now the focus of attention and is feeling the effects. Remember the previously plagued Biden border in Texas. If the Democratic Socialists of America get their way, Joe Biden will look like little league. Socialist globalists do not respect nation-states, borders, police, or law.

Will the long-suffering Spanish public allow socialist spin doctors to wave a magic wand and make all these scandals disappear? What about the duplicitous EU? Or will Spaniards rise to the occasion and save Western civilization once again? Maybe this time they will need some help from Delta Force.

It is time we read Spain the riot act. Drop it from NATO—it will not pay its allotted fair share anyway—and tell it where to go.