Of the many photos circulating from the huge congress in Barcelona, one that I took myself caught my eye and at first thought was a failure. Pedro S\u00e1nchez was just on stage for his closing speech and had his eyes closed. On reflection, this very photo stood out: it exudes an unaffected emotion, pride. And that pride raises an interesting question: where is this going to lead?<\/p>\n
Anyone who follows international politics can hardly ignore Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez. Under his leadership, Spain joined South Africa's genocide case at the International Court of Justice, was the last country to oppose NATO's norm of 5%, and swiftly and openly turned against Israel's and the US' acts of war towards Iran. For idealists and many left-wing thinkers, he has become a figurehead. In Spain itself, by the way, he is less popular and his premiership is regularly overshadowed by corruption woes, although much of the population can appreciate his outspoken foreign policy.<\/p>\n
In 2023, he became prime minister (in Spain: Presidente) for the third time, after forging a high-profile coalition with the leftist SUMAR and the support of a motley crew of regional parties. This was clever political handiwork, but much has already been written about that. More interesting is what this means for the broader political movement of which we ourselves are a part.<\/p>\n
In fact, S\u00e1nchez is also president of Socialist International (SI) and one of the few Social Democrats currently leading a government in Europe. This gives him a unique key position. Many European social democratic parties left the SI over a decade ago because they no longer recognised its direction and functioning. They founded the Progressive Alliance (PA) as an alternative international network.<\/p>\n
It is well known that S\u00e1nchez would like to see the SI and the PA one day reunite into one global centre-left movement. In Barcelona, therefore, Chantal Kambiwa (General Coordinator of the SI) and Machris Cabreros (Coordinator of the PA) stood together on stage. This seems symbolic, but in a gathering where so many government leaders, party leaders, intellectuals and activists come together, such a moment can take on more meaning afterwards than is visible at first glance.<\/p>\n
Besides this institutional dimension, the approach of the conference was also striking. We are not talking about a conference or symposium, but a mobilisation<\/em>. This implies that it is not enough to bring party supporters together and pass resolutions. Active connections must be sought with civil society organisations, trade unions, local leaders and thinkers. A leftist political movement cannot exist without deep roots in society.<\/p>\n This was also a central theme at the PES congress in Amsterdam in 2025. And the collaboration between PvdA and GroenLinks, now Progressief Nederland (PRO), also spearheaded movement building. That idea runs remarkably smoothly from PRO, to PES, to S\u00e1nchez's Global Progressive Mobilisation. In practice, it is still often listening to party leaders and politely applauding, but every movement starts somewhere, and the direction is clear.<\/p>\n With S\u00e1nchez, are we getting a crowbar to bring the international progressive movement back more into line? Have we seen the starting shot of a renewed connection between the political left and its social allies? Given the state of international politics, this seems not only logical but necessary.<\/p>\n Major historical shifts are never the work of one person or one event. But anyone who saw S\u00e1nchez's proud gaze could just feel that something was set in motion here.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Van de vele foto\u2019s die rondgingen van het enorme congres in Barcelona, viel me er \u00e9\u00e9n op die ik zelf maakte en waarvan ik eerst dacht dat hij mislukt was. Pedro S\u00e1nchez stond net op het podium voor zijn slotspeech en had zijn ogen gesloten. Bij nader inzien sprong juist deze foto eruit: hij straalt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21115,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-democracy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundationmaxvanderstoel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundationmaxvanderstoel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundationmaxvanderstoel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundationmaxvanderstoel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundationmaxvanderstoel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/foundationmaxvanderstoel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21117,"href":"https:\/\/foundationmaxvanderstoel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21114\/revisions\/21117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundationmaxvanderstoel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundationmaxvanderstoel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundationmaxvanderstoel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundationmaxvanderstoel.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}