The blatantly illegal US invasion of Venezuela aiming to plunder its resources is thoroughly exposing Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Sumar coalition government. Even as anger builds among workers in Spain and internationally against the war, Madrid is cynically lining up behind Trump’s war lies. Opposing the onslaught on Venezuela urgently poses the task of mobilizing the working class independently of the union bureaucracies and pseudo-left parties orbiting around the Spanish government.
To be sure, now that the US regime change operation is underway, and President Nicolás Maduro has been abducted to New York City, Madrid is calling for peace. “Spain calls for de-escalation and moderation, and for all actions to be carried out in respect of international law and the principles of the UN Charter,” the Spanish Foreign Ministry declared in a statement over the weekend.
However, its statement made no criticism of US aggression against Venezuela, instead offering its diplomatic services to help carry out Washington’s regime change operation: “Spain is disposed to offer its good services to reach a negotiated, pacific settlement to the current crisis. Spain recalls that it has not recognized the result of the [last Venezuelan elections] of July 28, 2024, and has always supported initiatives to reach a democratic solution for Venezuela.”
Spain’s calls for “moderation” are a disgusting attempt to verbally distance Madrid from Washington’s illegal war, which faces mass opposition in the Spanish working class, while positioning Madrid to grab a share of the oil and mineral resources, should Trump’s regime change war have initial successes.
Spanish Prime Minster Pedro Sánchez reiterated this position in a tweet reacting to Trump’s press conference Saturday. After a month-long naval blockade of Venezuela including dozens of strikes that left 100 people dead, mostly fishermen, US forces had launched air strikes on civilian and military targets in Venezuela, US forces invaded Venezuela and kidnapped Maduro. Trump pledged to “run” Venezuela and control its oil production until a “transition of power” and threatened a “second and much larger attack” if Caracas refuses to agree to regime change.
In response, Sánchez repeated in a tweet that “Spain did not recognize the Maduro regime,” pathetically adding: “We call on all actors to think of the civilian population, to respect the United Nations Charter, and to work toward a fair and negotiated transition.”
Trump is not respecting the UN Charter or negotiating a fair transition, but setting out to rape and plunder Venezuela.
Sánchez also warned that the war could push “the region toward a future of uncertainty and militarism,” reflecting concerns far beyond Venezuela itself. Indeed, Madrid is acutely aware that the US-led war threatens its own profits and strategic interests in Venezuela.
Spanish capital aims to continue drawing profits from a country where more than 100 Spanish companies once operated, and where Spain’s direct investments exceeded €20 billion. Latin America accounts for over 30 percent of Spain’s outward foreign direct investment stock—roughly equivalent to its total investment in the European Union—while also representing 8 percent of inward foreign direct investment. Spanish oil firm Repsol, banks like BBVA and telecoms giant Telefónica stand to lose billions of dollars, should US companies control Venezuela.
Madrid’s response reflects fears within the PSOE-Sumar government of the eruption of mass anti-war opposition in workers across Europe and the Americas. More than 4 million people living in Spain were born in Latin America. Opposition to decades of US- and European-backed coups and dictatorships in Latin America are deeply rooted in the international working class. But it is impossible to oppose Trump’s attempt to plunder Venezuela through any of the parties of capitalist rule in Spain, such as Sumar or Podemos.
This weekend, Deputy Prime Minister and Sumar leader Yolanda Díaz declared on social media: “Our firm condemnation of this imperialist aggression against Venezuela. The world is less safe and less free since Trump and the international movement of hatred acted with impunity. We will always stand for international law and peace.”
What a fraud! Under PSOE-Podemos and then PSOE–Sumar governments, Spain did not seek peace, but the greatest militarization since the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War. In 2025 alone, Spain’s real military spending exceeded €65 billion, more than four times the figure officially acknowledged by the government, roughly 4.1 percent of GDP. Total military and internal security spending is set to rise further in 2026, surpassing €80 billion.
Beyond providing military supplies for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the PSOE-Podemos (2019-2023) and then PSOE-Sumar (2023-present) governments funneled billions of euros in weapons to Ukraine amid NATO’s war with Russia. The illegal US invasion of Venezuela exposes the political pretext for this war and the European remilitarization policy—that NATO supposedly had to fight for democracy and peace against Russian aggression—as a political lie.
Sumar emerged as a split-off from Podemos, sections of which left the government as Madrid’s complicity in the Gaza genocide became more widely known. However, today, it is still serving its main political function: working to block an independent struggle of the working class against imperialism.
This weekend, Podemos secretary general Ione Belarra denounced the United States, declaring that the United States “thinks the world belongs to it and that it can do whatever it wants with its peoples. We cannot allow this. My deepest rejection of this attack on Venezuela. Spain is a country of peace. Let us break relations with the United States and leave NATO before it is too late.”
Similarly, Irene Montero, who served as equality minister under the PSOE-Podemos government (2019-2023) and currently sits as a leading Podemos lawmaker in the European parliament, wrote: “Trump bombs Venezuela. The US is a danger. Either we stop them or they will destroy us. Spain is a country of peace and the government must stop any alliance with the US, starting with NATO. All our support to the Venezuelan people. No more wars for oil.”
While many figures in Spain’s ruling establishment fear that US imperialism could turn militarily on them, as well, Montero is not calling to build a movement in the working class against imperialist war or the NATO alliance. Rather, she is trying to distance herself from her role as a cog of the NATO alliance with fatuous lies about Spain as a “country of peace.” The Spanish working class wants peace, but the record of Spanish imperialism under Podemos and then Sumar has not been peaceful. Rather, these parties proved to represent pro-war layers of the affluent middle class.
What is Podemos’ record in office? Together with the PSOE, it raised military spending and waged NATO’s proxy war against Russia, sending hundreds of millions of euros in financial and military aid to the far-right regime in Ukraine, including Spanish anti-tank missiles sent to the neo-Nazi Azov battalion. It ended its tenure in government by deploying Spanish warships to patrol alongside a US aircraft carrier group in the eastern Mediterranean amid the Gaza genocide.
When mass strikes unfolded against inflation in Spain, by metalworkers or truck drivers, Podemos sat in the government as it sent riot police to attack strikers.
The great unmentionable in Podemos’ criticisms of the United States is the American working class. The Venezuelan war is bound up with Trump’s accelerating plans for military deployments to threaten mass protests in major US cities. The No Kings protests in November saw more than seven million people take to the streets across the US against Trump. But Podemos’ cynical, empty denunciations of Washington deliberately exclude any appeal to mass opposition within the United States.
Only the formation of rank-and-file organizations of struggle in the working class, independent from union bureaucracies tied to the PSOE and Podemos, can provide a framework for realizing the strategic task posed by imperialism’s turn to naked wars of plunder: uniting workers across Europe, the United States, Latin America and internationally in struggle against imperialism and capitalist system that produces war. This requires first and foremost the construction of a Trotskyist vanguard in the working class, fighting for socialism in the working class against parties like Sumar and Podemos.