BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opened a two-day visit to Spain on Friday by meeting with Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, as a gathering of leaders in Barcelona prepared to talk about the fate of the democratic order, the rise of the populist far right, and how to keep the machinery of power looking legitimate.
The event brought together leaders, mostly from small to mid-sized countries, in a former royal palace and a sprawling conference center, where the language of democracy, peace and multilateralism was paired with 15 signed agreements covering trade, satellite connections and the exploitation of rare earths needed for industry. The people at the top were busy signing papers and trading speeches while the rest of the world was left to absorb the consequences.
Who Gets to Set the Terms
Sánchez and Lula have been outspoken in their criticism of the decision by the U.S. and Israel to attack Iran, which has caused energy prices to soar. Both spoke in favor of peace during a one-hour news conference after their summit, though they did not name U.S. President Donald Trump, who has threatened both with punitive tariffs in the past.
Sánchez said, “We want to double our efforts to work for peace and for a reinforced multilateral order. While others open wounds, we want to mend them and cure them.” The line sounds polished enough for a summit stage, but the actual instruments of power were plain enough: Spain’s government declared its airspace closed to U.S. planes being used in the Iran war, and said it is not allowing the U.S. to use jointly operated military bases in southern Spain for actions related to the war.
Earlier this week, Lula released a video message expressing “deep solidarity” with Pope Leo XIV after public criticisms made by Trump following the pontiff’s attack on the Iran war. The exchange shows the same old hierarchy at work: presidents, prime ministers and popes trading statements while ordinary people live with the fallout of war, tariffs and rising prices.
The Democracy Brand
Lula and Sánchez are among the few progressive leaders who have withstood a shift to the right and remain popular in their countries while defending multilateral agreements, human rights, environmental protections and gender equality — all bugaboos of Trump, Lula’s neighbor in Argentina, Javier Milei, and Europe’s far right.
The meetings came during a busy week for Sánchez, who had just returned from meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, his fourth trip to Beijing in just over three years. That itinerary says plenty about where the real conversations happen: among state managers and economic blocs, not the people who will live with the results.
Lula and Sánchez, along with ministers from their cabinets, signed 15 agreements when they met inside the former royal palace in Barcelona. The agreements ranged from trade and satellite connections to the exploitation of rare earths needed for industry. The pageantry of cooperation sat comfortably beside the usual architecture of extraction and state-to-state bargaining.
Lula said, “Brazil and Spain are side by side in the trenches together.” He also said, “We are an example that it is possible to find solutions to problems without giving into the empty promises of extremism.” He said the aim for Saturday was to discuss how “democracy must go beyond just voting and bring real benefits to people’s lives.”
That line lands in a familiar place: elections as ritual, followed by the same institutions deciding what counts as a “real benefit.” The summit itself was built around that tension, with leaders promising more democracy while staying firmly inside the apparatus that manages it.
What They Call Participation
The first gathering on Saturday was the IV Meeting in Defense of Democracy. It was launched by Brazil and Spain in 2024 as a forum to exchange ideas aimed at combating the “extremism, polarization and misinformation” that undermine participatory democracy, the organizers said. The first two editions were held at the United Nations, and the previous one was in Santiago, Chile, last year.
This edition included European Council President António Costa, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and leaders from countries including Uruguay, Lithuania, Ghana and Albania. Lula said, “If the president of Mexico and South Africa are coming, that means our group is growing.”
Sheinbaum’s participation came after Spain’s King Felipe VI recently resolved a longstanding diplomatic dispute by acknowledging that the Spanish conquest of the Americas had led to the “abuse” of native peoples. Even here, the language of reconciliation arrives through the mouth of monarchy, after centuries of colonial violence and a diplomatic quarrel finally made manageable.
Many of the leaders from the first event were to stay for the inaugural Global Progressive Mobilization, a gathering of left-leaning politicians and policymakers at the same venue later on Saturday. The format was launched after Sánchez and former Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, now president of the Party of European Socialists political grouping, discussed the idea at a meeting of European Socialists last year.
Sánchez and Lula were both to give speeches at the event, which was expected to have 3,000 attendees, including U.S. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy. The program included round tables on wage inequality and how to improve election results for progressives.
Pol Morillas, director of the Barcelona-based foreign affairs think tank CIDOB, said the gatherings were meant to be a show of force by traditional democratic leaders who have seen how the populist far-right has successfully forwarded its messages of anti-migration and economic nationalism through international gatherings. Morillas also linked the meetings to the speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the Davos economic forum in January on the importance of so-called “middle powers” seeking new strategies to deal with a world of aggressive superpowers.
Lula, Sánchez and other leaders at the events, Morillas said, “share the understanding that the world is not just for the great powers.”