“It is a success that Spain is part of NATO”, Pedro Sánchez highlighted this Tuesday from Brussels, after the celebration of the extraordinary European Council, after the day before he participated together with King Felipe VI in the commemorative acts of the 40th anniversary of the entry of Spain in the Atlantic Alliance, and despite the misgivings and complaints about it from its government partner, United We Can. "I respect the testimonial positions", warned the chief executive, minimizing these criticisms of the purple formation that, however, add fuel to the Popular Party's offensive in the face of constant discrepancies in the government coalition.
Sánchez has thus branded the positions of United We Can against NATO as "testimonial", and has also considered them old and, above all, surpassed by reality. “Some of them come from a position regarding NATO that comes from afar, from when we were little”, he pointed out. He thus recalled that in 1982, the year of Spain's accession to the Atlantic Alliance, he himself was only 10 years old. “And there were already political parties that were effectively demonstrating against NATO. But many years have passed, the geopolitical context is different, Spain's membership in NATO is already forty years old. And my responsibility as President of the Government is to guarantee the defense and security of my country”, he stressed.
“The defense and security of Spain and the European Union is based on and is consolidated by their membership of the European Union or NATO”, Sánchez insisted. “And this is known from Finland to Sweden, who are knocking on NATO's door to join, to Portugal and Spain. That is, from north to south and from east to west, and even people from the right and people from the left”, she has argued. And he has highlighted the importance of the Atlantic Alliance summit to be held at the end of June in Madrid.
Despite the fact that Vice President Yolanda Díaz and the ministers of United We Can do not want to confirm their attendance at the NATO summit events in Madrid, Sánchez has stated that the host of the meeting will not be the coalition government as a whole, but the same. “I have been going to quite a few NATO summits, and I seem to remember that the host is the Presidency of the Government,” he warned. In any case, he has assured that neither the secretary general of the Atlantic Alliance nor any of the allied countries has asked him about the division of his Executive in this regard. On the contrary, he has highlighted, and has recalled that Jens Sotoltemberg himself has "praised the work of the Government of Spain and recognizes its commitment to NATO". “I understand the debate in national politics, but this has no bearing on the holding of the NATO summit or on the degree of commitment that the Government of Spain has with NATO, which is total and is thus recognized. by the secretary general and the rest of the nations”, Sánchez settled.
