Progressive leaders rally in Barcelona to defend the traditional liberal order

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BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Progressive and traditional democratic leaders gathered in Barcelona on Saturday to discuss how to restore faith in the liberal order threatened by a world drifting toward far-right extremism and torn by conflict.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump and the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, is hosting two overlapping events about democracy and progressive politics at a convention center in Spain’s second city.

The IV Meeting in Defense of Democracy brought together Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Colombian President Gustavo Petro, among the leaders or high-ranking officials of 10 other countries, including the United Kingdom.

While no leader mentioned Trump in the small part of the meeting open to the press, the staunchly unilateral position of the American president that breaks with decades of U.S. foreign policy, and his derision of NATO and the United Nations, hung over the meetings intent on defending the multilateral rules-based order.

“We all see the attacks against the multilateral system, the repeated attempts to undermine international law and the dangerous normalization of the use of force,” Sánchez said at the start of the meeting.

The Spanish leader said that the focus would be to find ways to reinforce the multilateral order — starting with reforming the U.N., regulating social media to stop the spread of hate speech and disinformation, and methods to combat growing economic inequality.

“We’re meeting at a time of extraordinary challenge globally with rising prices as a result of conflict once again in the Middle East," British Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said. “We’re also meeting at a time of tremendous technological advance ... so it is important that we meet, that we discuss, that we organize on behalf of working people.”

Ramaphosa promoted his plan to push for the United Nations to launch a comprehensive, international study and policy-action plan to battle the growing wealth gap both between and within nations on the model of its efforts to mitigate climate change.

He said South Africa will present a draft resolution to establish the International Panel on Inequality to the U.N. General Assembly in September.

Among concrete proposals, Sheinbaum plugged her idea that governments commit to spending the equivalent of 10% of their military budgets on reforestation projects.

“Each year, instead of planting the seeds of war, we will plant the seeds of life,” she said.

Sheinbaum also said she wants to propose a declaration, without specifying if she referred to the U.N., against a military intervention in Cuba, a move that Trump has said he believe he will “ have the honor ” of carrying out.

Later on Saturday, several leaders will stay on to attend the inaugural Global Progressive Mobilization, where some 3,000 left-leaning elected officials and policy analysts will exchange ideas.

The gatherings come a day after Sánchez and Lula held a summit at a former royal palace in Barcelona. They shared their concern for a world that has been shaken by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Israel's offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas' attack, and now, the conflict in Iran that has disrupted oil and natural gas markets.

Lula and Sánchez are among the few progressive leaders who have withstood a shift to the right and remain popular in their countries while defending multilateral agreements, human rights, environmental protections and gender equality — values often challenged by Trump, Lula’s neighbor in Argentina, libertarian President Javier Milei, and Europe’s far right.