![\"LEADING](\"https:\/\/www.manilatimes.net\/manilatimes\/uploads\/images\/2026\/04\/17\/1018073.jpg\")
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\n 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\n <\/p>\n
Lula and S\u00e1nchez, 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.<\/p>\n
Their bilateral meeting will be a prelude for the following day\u2019s double dose of gatherings when Lula and S\u00e1nchez confer with other leaders at two events inside a sprawling conference center in Spain\u2019s second-largest city.<\/p>\n
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By signing up with an email address, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to the Terms of Service<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2018Not anti-Trump\u2019<\/p>\n 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 \u201cextremism, polarization and misinformation\u201d that undermines participatory democracy, the organizers say.<\/p>\n The first two editions of this event were held at the United Nations and the previous one was in Chile\u2019s capital Santiago last year.<\/p>\n While both Lula and S\u00e1nchez have spoken out against many of Trump\u2019s positions and policies, including his and Israel\u2019s decision to attack Iran, Lula said the multilateral summit should not be seen in that vein.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not going to be an anti-Trump meeting,\u201d Lula told Spanish newspaper El Pa\u00eds on Thursday. \u201cWe are going to discuss the state of democracy, to see what went wrong and what we have to do to repair it.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Sheinbaum\u2019s participation comes after Spain\u2019s King Felipe VI ironed out a long-standing diplomatic dispute regarding Spain\u2019s colonial past when he recently acknowledged the Spanish conquest of the Americas had led to the \u201cabuse\u201d of native peoples.<\/p>\n Rallying the left<\/p>\n 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 S\u00e1nchez and Sweden\u2019s former prime minister Stefan L\u00f6fven discussed the idea at a meeting of European Socialists last year.<\/p>\n S\u00e1nchez 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.<\/p>\n The meeting comes amid a busy week for S\u00e1nchez, who just returned from meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, his fourth trip to Beijing in just over three years.<\/p>\n S\u00e1nchez\u2019s government declared its airspace closed to US planes being us\u200bed 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.<\/p>\n Earlier this week, Lula released a video message expressing \u201cdeep solidarity\u201d with Pope Leo XIV following public criticisms made by Trump after the pontiff slammed the war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BARCELONA, Spain \u2014 Brazil\u2019s President Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva began on Friday a two-day visit to Spain,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129],"tags":[6127,3746,20485,10176,304,3944,6570,20653,306,5668],"class_list":{"0":"post-30183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pedro-sanchez","8":"tag-amid","9":"tag-leaders","10":"tag-lula","11":"tag-meet","12":"tag-pedro-sanchez","13":"tag-populism","14":"tag-progressive","15":"tag-rising","16":"tag-sanchez","17":"tag-to"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116421022634394555","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}