Spain's China Gambit: Pedro Sánchez, Strategic Autonomy, and the European Turn to Beijing — with Mario Esteban Rodríguez
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Welcome to the Seneca Podcast, the weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics. Foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I'm Kaiser Gua coming to you this week from my home in Beijing.
Seneca is supported this year by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a national resource center for the study of East Asia. The Seneca podcast is and will remain free But listeners, if you value my work and would like to see me continue doing it, please support Seneca by becoming a paying subscriber at cinecapodcast.com. Your subscription helps me continue to bring you these conversations. As we record this episode, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is wrapping up his fourth visit to China in four years, and this one may be the most consequential yet.
It comes at a moment when Spain has emerged almost improbably as the most outspoken voice in all of Europe challenging the direction of American foreign policy. Just weeks before this trip, Spain took the extraordinary step of closing its airspace to U.S. military aircraft involved in the war in Iran and denied Washington the use of the Rota and Moron military bases in southern Spain. Trump threatened to cut off trade with Madrid. Secretary of State Rubio accused Spanish leaders of bragging about it, and Prime Minister Sanchez fired back with one of the great rejoinders of this young century The government of Spain will not applaud those who set the world on fire just because they show up with a bucket.
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