Progressive leaders from around the globe gathered in Barcelona on Saturday to try and galvanize their forces and defend the multilateral rules-based order in a world turning to the right and violently torn by superpowers.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump and the US-Israeli war against Iran, hosted two overlapping events about democracy and progressive politics at a convention center in Spain’s second-largest city.
While no foreign leader directly criticized Trump by name in public, the staunchly unilateral position of the American president that breaks with decades of U.S. foreign policy, including his derision of NATO and the United Nations, hung over the meetings.
“We all see the attacks against the multilateral system, the repeated attempts to undermine international law and the dangerous normalization of the use of force,” Sánchez said.
