Spain Seeks Closer China Ties
After meeting Xi Jinping, Spain’s prime minister said Europe and China should forge closer ties to counter threats to multilateralism and urged Beijing to play a bigger role on climate, security, defence and inequality. The comments signal a strand of European hedging that blends cooperation with strategic concern as global leadership patterns shift. (cyprus-mail.com, arabnews.pk)
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on April 14 that Europe and China should work more closely after talks with Xi Jinping in Beijing. (reuters.com) Sánchez made the remarks after meeting Xi at the Great Hall of the People during a China visit that ran from April 11 to April 15. Xi said the international order was “crumbling” and called for stronger communication and cooperation with Spain. (mfa.gov.cn, apnews.com) The Spanish leader also said China should take a bigger role on climate change, security, defence and inequality, while adding a day earlier that China’s trade imbalance with the European Union was “unsustainable” and Beijing should open its market wider to European goods. (channelnewsasia.com, france24.com) That mix of outreach and complaint is the point. Spain is pressing for more business with China while staying inside the European Union’s broader “de-risking” policy, which aims to cut dangerous dependencies without fully severing trade ties. (europarl.europa.eu, ec.europa.eu) Brussels gave that policy teeth in October 2024, when the European Commission imposed definitive countervailing duties on battery electric vehicles made in China for five years after an anti-subsidy investigation. Spain has often sounded more open to engagement than some other European capitals even as those trade defenses moved ahead. (ec.europa.eu, politico.eu) Sánchez’s trip was his fourth visit to China in four years, a pace that underlines how Madrid wants a direct channel to Beijing as relations between Europe and the United States come under strain. Reuters reported before the visit that Chinese firms invested €643 million in Spain in 2025, up from €149 million in 2024. (reuters.com, reuters.com) The trade relationship is large but lopsided. Spain imported €4.1 billion from China in January 2026 and exported €576 million, leaving a monthly deficit of €3.53 billion, according to trade data compiled by the Observatory of Economic Complexity. (oec.world) Chinese state media cast Spain as a steady European partner, and Xi told Sánchez that both countries should reject a return to the “law of the jungle.” European officials and analysts, though, still frame China as both an economic partner and a strategic risk. (mfa.gov.cn, bruegel.org) So the meeting in Beijing did not mark a clean turn toward China or a break with Brussels. It showed how one European government is trying to keep trade, diplomacy and leverage in play at the same time. (reuters.com, politico.eu)
