Spain-U.S.: The Power of Saying No

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In a war shaped by missiles, blockades, threats and Donald Trump’s unpredictable announcements, one of Europe’s most consequential decisions has been a refusal. Spain rejected the use of the Rota and Morón bases for attacks on Iran and later closed its airspace to aircraft involved in the campaign.

That decision will not stop the war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz or turn Madrid into a mediator between Washington and Tehran. But it does introduce a political limit at a moment when too many actors appear to have accepted military force as an ordinary instrument of regional management.

That limit matters even more now. The war has moved beyond the initial cycle of airstrikes and retaliation. It has become a conflict defined by maritime pressure, energy disruption, legal intimidation and diplomatic stalemate. Iran still links the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to the end of the U.S. blockade, while Washington insists the waterway must reopen and that Tehran must accept a deal.

Meanwhile, China has expressed frustration with a conflict it says should never have begun, but there is little indication Beijing will force Iran’s hand. The result is a dangerous impasse: oil markets remain exposed, Gulf security is fragile, and diplomacy is trapped between maximalist demands and coercive instruments.

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In that context, Spain’s position is not a minor detail. It is a reminder that escalation is driven not only by those who fire missiles, but also by those who normalise the infrastructure that makes war easier. Bases, airspace, refuelling routes and financial sanctions are not technical details. They are part of the architecture through which wars are enabled, sustained and legitimised.

Alliances are not blank cheques

Spain’s refusal should be understood beyond domestic partisanship. It is not sympathy for the Islamic Republic, nor moral equivalence between attacker and attacked. Spain can condemn Iranian repression, reject any move towards nuclear weaponisation and criticise Tehran’s regional behaviour while also refusing to participate in a military operation it considers contrary to international law. Without that distinction, legality becomes a vocabulary invoked against adversaries and suspended when it constrains allies.

Rota and Morón are jointly used bases, but they remain under Spanish sovereignty. That is why the refusal to facilitate flights linked to the offensive against Iran goes beyond logistics. It underlines that alliance with the United States is not a blank cheque; that NATO membership does not oblige a state to support every war; and that the transatlantic relationship cannot be reduced to automatic discipline when the UN Charter, regional stability and European interests are at stake.

The most important feature of the Spanish position is not that it is anti-American. It is that it draws a line between defensive commitments and participation in an offensive war. Spain has continued to honour ordinary alliance obligations, including those linked to NATO, European defence and the bilateral relationship with Washington.

What it has refused is the use of Spanish territory and airspace as part of the operational chain behind attacks on Iran. That distinction is politically uncomfortable, but strategically necessary. It also makes the position harder to dismiss as a mere gesture. A rhetorical “no to war” can be applauded or denounced according to partisan preference.

An operational refusal is more serious because it forces a question European governments often avoid: where does allied solidarity end and complicity begin? If a state cannot control the use of its own territory in a war it considers illegal, sovereignty becomes ceremonial. If legal limits disappear every time an ally invokes urgency, international law becomes decorative.

Rebuilding coherence on international law

This is what makes the Spanish case relevant beyond Spain. In Ukraine, Europe rightly argued that violations of sovereignty and the use of force could not be normalised. In Gaza, Europe’s inability to apply that principle with comparable firmness badly damaged its credibility.

In Iran, Spain is attempting to reconstruct a line of coherence: no to preventive war, no to the indefinite expansion of self-defence and no to the idea that strategic urgency authorises the suspension of rules. The situations are different, but the principle cannot be infinitely elastic.

The recent Spanish support for Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, adds another layer to this argument. By awarding her the Order of Civil Merit, and by urging the European Commission to activate the EU Blocking Statute against U.S. sanctions targeting Albanese and members of the International Criminal Court, Spain has moved from refusing complicity in a specific war to defending the institutional framework of international law itself.

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This matters because the current crisis is not only military. It is also a struggle over who is allowed to identify violations, document abuses and pursue accountability. Sanctioning a UN rapporteur is not simply a dispute over personalities. It is an attempt to discipline the institutions that make legal scrutiny possible.

A foreign policy that claims to defend international law cannot stop at refusing the use of military bases. It must also protect those who investigate, document and adjudicate alleged violations, including when their work is politically inconvenient for powerful allies.

The temporary decision by a U.S. federal judge to block sanctions against Albanese reinforces the same point from within the American legal system. It shows the issue is not “Spain versus the United States” in civilisational or ideological terms. The question is whether executive power, military urgency and alliance politics can override basic legal constraints.

Spain’s position becomes stronger when framed not as an anti-American reflex, but as part of a broader defence of legality against arbitrary power, including arbitrary power exercised by democratic governments.

The risk of symbolism without consistency

The recent progressive gathering in Barcelona, attended by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other leaders from the Global South, should also be viewed in this context. Not as a finished alternative to U.S. power, nor as an immediate solution for the Middle East, but as an attempt to articulate a different political grammar: multilateralism, de-escalation, legality and autonomy.

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That may sound insufficient against the noise of aircraft carriers, energy markets and missile exchanges. Yet international politics is not shaped only by the capacity to strike. It is also shaped by the ability to deny legitimacy to certain strikes, sanctions and forms of pressure.

The danger, of course, is that everything remains symbolic. A foreign policy grounded in international law requires consistency. It is not enough to oppose a war against Iran while tolerating the devastation of Gaza, minimising instability in Lebanon or applying legality selectively according to the ally involved.

Coherence does not mean treating different conflicts as identical. It means not abandoning the same principles when they become politically inconvenient.

That is why the Spanish position is important, but also fragile. It can be weakened if it becomes merely a domestic slogan, a partisan memory of the Iraq War or an anti-Trump reflex. It becomes stronger if it is framed as doctrine: no participation in offensive military action without a clear legal basis; no automatic use of Spanish territory for wars Spain does not authorise; no acceptance of sanctions designed to intimidate international legal institutions; and no separation between Europe’s security interests and the rules that protect smaller and medium-sized states from arbitrary force.

Such a doctrine would not be neutral. It would recognise threats from Iran without accepting that every threat justifies any response. It would preserve the alliance with Washington without reducing Spain to a logistical platform. It would defend Ukraine’s sovereignty, condemn the destruction of Gaza and reject preventive war against Iran through the same basic logic: force without limits does not create order; it corrodes it.

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That is the real meaning of saying no. It is not passivity, isolationism or moral vanity. It is a form of power available to states that cannot dictate the course of a war but can refuse to make that war easier.

In the Middle East, every new intervention is usually presented as inevitable, surgical and exceptional. It almost never is. Spain’s refusal will not reopen Hormuz, resolve the nuclear dispute or restrain Trump, Israel or Iran on its own. But it may help prevent war from becoming the default language of regional politics.

At a time when legality is often treated as an obstacle to strategy, saying no is a way of remembering that sovereignty, prudence, accountability and restraint are also strategic assets.

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