Pedro Sánchez has claimed this Saturday the unity of progressive forces in the face of the advance of reactionary leaderships and has warned that democracy is going through a stage of growing fragility. The President of the Government launched his message in Barcelona, where he placed Donald Trump as a symbol of a global political wave that questions basic democratic consensuses.
“Democracy should not be taken for granted”, stated Sánchez during his speech at the IV Meeting in Defense of Democracy, held within the framework of the Global Progressive Mobilisation (GPM).
Barcelona as an international showcase
The event, held at Fira de Barcelona Gran Via, brought together international progressive leaders with the objective of coordinating strategies against the rise of the far-right, political polarization, and institutional erosion in various Western democracies.
Sánchez took advantage of the forum to defend that the response cannot be solely national, but also international, through alliances between governments and political forces that share a democratic and social agenda.
Trump as a reference of ideological clash
Without centering all his discourse on American politics, the Spanish president used the figure of Trump as a reference for a political model based on confrontation, nationalism, and institutional weakening.
Moncloa considers that Trump's return to the center of the international stage forces Europe to strengthen its democracies and build an alternative based on social cohesion, multilateralism, and defense of rights.
Democracy, inequality, and disinformation
Sánchez also linked democratic health with the fight against inequality and the regulation of the digital environment. In his opinion, extremist discourses find fertile ground where economic frustration grows or institutional trust weakens.
For this reason, he defended combining economic growth, social protection, and new rules for technological platforms as part of the same democratic strategy.
Message to the progressive space
The president also sent an internal message to the European and Ibero-American progressive bloc: the need to maintain unity despite tactical or national differences.
His intervention reinforces the Government's strategy of projecting Spain as one of the benchmarks of international social democracy in a context of geopolitical change and ideological reconfiguration in the West.