Anadolu staff
13 April 2026•Update: 13 April 2026
Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Monday urged China to leverage its global influence to help bring an end to wars in the Middle East, as well as in Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported.
“China can do more - for example, by demanding, as it is already doing, that international law be upheld and that conflicts in Lebanon, Iran, Gaza, the West Bank, and Ukraine come to an end,” Sanchez said during an address at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the report said.
Sanchez, who arrived in China on a five-day visit on Saturday, is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the trip, his fourth since being elected.
Both Spain and China, expected to host US President Donald Trump next month, have denounced the US-Israeli strikes against Iran as “unacceptable” and "illegal."
Spain has also closed its airspace to flights by the US fighter jets participating in the Iran war, which started on Feb. 28, and is preventing Washington from using its two bases on Spanish territory for that purpose.
“International law is the foundation of everything,” said Sanchez.
Addressing scholars and students at Tsinghua University, Sanchez said: “Progress no longer has a single center; rather, it germinates simultaneously in various places around the world.”
“This is not a hypothesis: it is the new reality,” he stressed.
“And Spain, from realism, pragmatism, and responsibility, chooses to embrace it,” said Sanchez, according to remarks from his speech posted on US social media company X.
About the EU’s ties with the world’s second-largest economy, Sanchez said: “Europe may seem small on a map. But its weight is decisive, and its unity is a guarantee of stability and prosperity in the world, … a world that cannot be understood without China.”
“If China and Europe have prospered together in the past, there's no reason why they can't do so again. We are destined to understand each other,” said Sanchez.
Sanchez’s visit comes about five months after Spanish King Felipe VI paid a state visit to China -- the first visit by a Spanish monarch in 18 years.
Spain and China saw bilateral trade volume climb over $55 billion last year as Beijing remains Madrid’s largest trading partner outside the EU.
