BARCELONA, Spain — Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva began on Friday a two-day visit to Spain, where he and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez would meet with other leaders, mostly of small- to midsized countries, who are concerned with the fate of the democratic order and the rise of the populist far right.
Lula and Sánchez are both outspoken in their criticism of United States President Donald Trump, who has threatened both with punitive tariffs. They are considered standard-bearers of progressive or liberal politics on their respective continents, where reactionary parties and far-right populism have been growing for years.
LEADING THE WAY Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (left) and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez review troops during their summit in the city of Barcelona, northwestern Spain, on April 17, 2026. AP PHOTO
Lula and Sánchez, along with their cabinet ministers, were meeting at a former royal palace in the northeastern city of Barcelona, where they are expected to sign agreements regarding their economies, technology and social policies.
Their bilateral meeting will be a prelude for the following day’s double dose of gatherings when Lula and Sánchez confer with other leaders at two events inside a sprawling conference center in Spain’s second-largest city.
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‘Not anti-Trump’
The first gathering on Saturday is the IV Meeting in Defense of Democracy. The event was launched by Brazil and Spain in 2024 as a forum to exchange ideas aimed at combating the “extremism, polarization and misinformation” that undermines participatory democracy, the organizers say.
The first two editions of this event were held at the United Nations and the previous one was in Chile’s capital Santiago last year.
While both Lula and Sánchez have spoken out against many of Trump’s positions and policies, including his and Israel’s decision to attack Iran, Lula said the multilateral summit should not be seen in that vein.
“This is not going to be an anti-Trump meeting,” Lula told Spanish newspaper El País on Thursday. “We are going to discuss the state of democracy, to see what went wrong and what we have to do to repair it.”
This edition will include the presence of Presidents Antonio Costa of the European Council, Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa and Gustavo Petro of Colombia.
Sheinbaum’s participation comes after Spain’s King Felipe VI ironed out a long-standing diplomatic dispute regarding Spain’s colonial past when he recently acknowledged the Spanish conquest of the Americas had led to the “abuse” of native peoples.
Rallying the left
Many of the leaders from the first event will stay put for the inaugural Global Progressive Mobilization, held at the same venue later on Saturday. The gathering of left-leaning politicians and policymakers was launched after Sánchez and Sweden’s former prime minister Stefan Löfven discussed the idea at a meeting of European Socialists last year.
Sánchez and Lula will both give speeches at the event, which is expected to have 3,000 attendees, including US Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, and feature round tables dedicated to issues ranging from wage inequality to how to improve election results for progressives.
The meeting comes amid a busy week for Sánchez, who just returned from meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, his fourth trip to Beijing in just over three years.
Sánchez’s government declared its airspace closed to US planes being used in the war on Iran, and said it is not allowing Washington 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 following public criticisms made by Trump after the pontiff slammed the war.