Barcelona, Spain — Left-wing leaders from across Europe and Latin America are holding a two-day conference in Spain in defense of the rule of international law and against the rise of the far-right.
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio da Silva, both vocal critics of U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, kicked off the events on Friday with a bilateral meeting at a former royal palace in Barcelona, the Associated Press reported.
On Saturday, two events will take place. The first, the IV Meeting in Defense of Democracy, which was launched in 2024, is designed to be a forum to exchange ideas aimed at combating “extremism, polarization and misinformation” organizers said.
Lula has said that the summit should not be seen as a chance to attack the policies of Trump.
“This is not going to be an anti-Trump meeting,” Lula told Spanish newspaper El País on Thursday. “We are going to discuss the state of democracy, to see what went wrong and what we have to do to repair it.”
Other heads of state attending the summit include Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum; South African President Cyril Ramaphosa; Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, as well leaders from countries including Uruguay, Lithuania, Ghana and Albania.
Sheinbaum’s decision to come to Spain comes after King Felipe VI recently acknowledged the Spanish conquest of the Americas led to the “abuse” of native peoples, a move which smoothed tensions between Mexico and Spain over their shared colonial heritage.
Sheinbaum has become one of the most powerful leftist voices in Latin America at a time when the continent has come under greater pressure from the Trump administration and some countries, like Chile and Ecuador, have swung to the right.
A popular figure in Mexico, she has also managed to maintain a good relationship with Trump.
The Defense of Democracy meeting will be followed by the Global Progressive Mobilization in the same venue in Barcelona on Saturday.
Sánchez and Lula are expected to give speeches at the event, which is tipped to have 3,000 attendees, including U.S. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy.
There will be discussions on issues including wage inequality and how to improve election results for progressives.
The Spanish prime minister may use this platform to criticize the U.S. president or may try to focus on what the Left has to offer as Spain faces a general election next year.
Spain recently declared its airspace closed to U.S. planes being used in the Iran war and Sánchez has declared the war against Iran “illegal”.
Pablo Simón, a political expert at the Carlos III University in Madrid, told Latin America Reports the summits were used by democratic leaders against extreme right-wing groups who used similar gatherings to promote their message against migration and in favor of free market nationalism.
In March, former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban hosted the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) summit in Budapest which was attended by Javier Millei, president of Argentina, Santiago Abascal, the Spanish leader of Vox, and Alice Weidel, the co-chair of Germany’s Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD).
“This summit is a way to counterattack against the influence of these far right leaders who wanted to get their message across on the international stage,” Simón said.
Featured image: Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio da Silva
Image credit: Luiz Inácio da Silva via X.
This article originally appeared on Latin America Reports and was republished with permission on EU Reports.
