Over the past two months, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has drawn international attention as the most prominent European critic of the US-Israeli war on Iran. As clips of his speeches have gone viral on social media, the Financial Times dubbed him “Trump's nemesis”; the Independent “Europe’s conscience”; while the New York Times described him as “a progressive superhero for many on the global left.”

It’s easy to see why. As fellow European leaders shrank from openly opposing Washington’s military aggression, Sánchez’s outspoken rhetoric cut through with progressives across the globe. Before the Spanish parliament in March, he described the war as “illegal, absurd, and cruel,” while in a recent op-ed in Le Monde Diplomatique he called out “the unilateral attempts by the United States to engineer regime change in Venezuela and Iran — all without seeking even a veneer of international approval.”

Nor did his defiance stop at words. From the beginning of the war, Sánchez’s center-left administration has refused the United States use of jointly run air bases on Spanish soil — which saw President Donald Trump threaten Spain with a trade embargo in retaliation. Then on March 11, Sánchez’s government permanently withdrew its ambassador to Israel, followed on March 30 by its closing of Spanish airspace to all US military aircraft involved in the bombing.