MADRID — No European country has infuriated Donald Trump more than Spain. Now it’s desperate to win his World Cup.

Teenage superstar Lamine Yamal, Rodri and co. enter the tournament as joint favorites alongside France. With the U.S. president apparently intent on making this a World Cup that projects his personal influence and America’s soft power, victory would be sweet for Spanish soccer fans — but especially so for their prime minister.

Outspoken socialist leader Pedro Sánchez, a supporter of Atlético Madrid, has clashed spectacularly with Trump over the Iran war, but also regarding NATO spending and Israel’s assault in Gaza. Meanwhile their policies on issues from energy to immigration could hardly be further apart.

“No prime minister previously has had as much acknowledgement [for fighting Trump] on the international stage or taken such an anti-American stance,” said Paco Camas, head of public opinion at polling firm Ipsos. Sánchez, he added, is positioning himself “at the forefront of resistance to the reactionary wave sweeping across Europe and the West.”

A recent poll by a public research instititute showed that two-thirds of Spaniards disapprove of Trump’s criticism of Spain, suggesting some cross-party support for Sánchez’s position. Another poll, by independent firm 40db, showed that 82 percent of Spaniards see Trump as a threat to world peace, more than any other global leader.

Spain, a soccer powerhouse that has won the World Cup once and the European Championship four times, starts its campaign against Cape Verde in Atlanta on Monday.

It hopes to end the journey in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium on July 19, lifting the trophy in front of the MAGA president so irritated by Madrid’s leadership.

‘Spain is a loser’

The trigger for the souring of Washington-Madrid relations was the Spanish government’s refusal last year to increase its defense spending in line with American demands.

While Trump strong-armed NATO partners into accepting a 5 percent of GDP expenditure target, Spain — traditionally one of the military alliance’s lowest defense spenders — insisted on keeping its expenditure at 2.1 percent. Sánchez said the 5-percent target would have meant “eliminating unemployment, sickness and maternity benefits, reducing all pensions by 40 percent, or cutting state investment in education by half.”

In response, Trump called the country “a laggard” and repeatedly referred to it in disparaging terms. “Maybe you should throw them out of NATO, frankly,” he said.

This year’s Middle East conflict only heightened tensions. Spain refused to allow the U.S. to use its joint military bases on Spanish territory for its offensive against Iran, with the prime minister labeling the attacks “unjustified and dangerous.”

Trump then threatened to cut off all trade ties with Spain, although that hasn’t happened so far, given how the country’s commercial relationships are embedded in the EU.

“We have a lot of winners, but Spain is a loser,” U.S. President Donald Trump fumed in March. | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

“We have a lot of winners, but Spain is a loser,” the president fumed in March to the New York Post.

Looming in the background has been the Sánchez government’s ongoing criticism of U.S. ally Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. In 2024, Spain, along with Ireland and Norway, recognized the state of Palestine; the Sánchez government was also the first in the EU to accuse Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration of genocide.

Immigration is good, actually

On hot-button social and environmental issues, Sánchez and Trump are also an ocean apart.

Sánchez responded to Trump’s pro-fossil fuel “Drill, baby, drill” slogan with one of his own: “Green, baby, green,” echoing his government’s commitment to renewable energy. Madrid has set a target of deriving 81 percent of its electricity output from renewables by 2030, well above the EU average.

His administration has also stridently defended immigration on economic and humanitarian grounds — and is currently in the process of legalizing the status of at least half a million unauthorized foreign workers.

“Unless they embrace migration, [Western countries] will experience a sharp demographic decline that will prevent them from keeping their economies and public services afloat,” Sánchez wrote in the New York Times in February. He used the op-ed to launch a thinly veiled attack on Trump’s migrant crackdown, warning of the “illegal and cruel” policies in place in some countries.

The clash between Sánchez’s self-declared “leftist, feminist, green” coalition and Trump’s MAGA government has been fed by simmering anti-Americanism in Spain.

Lluís Orriols, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University, explained that some anti-American sentiment has always been present on the Spanish left, but Socialist governments rarely tap into it. One exception was in 2004, when the newly elected prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq. 

 “The Socialists only sometimes make use of this [anti-Americanism],” Orriols said. “And when they do, it tends to have electoral benefits.”

The symbolic superstar

In theory, all this off-field baggage will be put aside once the Spanish team begins its World Cup odyssey on Monday.

Yet the country knows well that soccer is never far from politics or controversy.

In 2023, moments after the women’s team won the World Cup in Australia, the president of the Spanish soccer federation, Luis Rubiales, celebrated by kissing the player Jenni Hermoso on the mouth. The ensuing backlash saw street protests and government criticism — and ultimately led to Rubiales being tried and convicted of sexual assault.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez addresses the parliament on March 25, 2026. | Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images

Last month, FC Barcelona’s Yamal grabbed a Palestinian flag from a bystander and brandished it as his team rode an open-top bus to celebrate its league title. The gesture drew the fury of the Israeli government, which accused him of “fomenting hatred.” Sánchez leaped to the player’s defense, saying such comments came from those who were “blinded by their own shame.”

The 18-year-old Yamal is the star of the national team and a symbol of an ethnically mixed younger generation in Spain. With a Moroccan father and an Equatorial Guinean mother, he is the child of immigrants and a practicing Muslim.

Some would say he also represents the polarized times in Spain and worldwide. Yamal has suffered racist abuse and his father, Mounir Nasraoui, was once fined for breaking the glasses of a supporter of the pro-Trump far-right Vox party in an altercation at one of its campaign tents.

Victory for Yamal and the Spanish team in North America would be a huge achievement on the soccer field. It would also be another twist in the complex relationship between Madrid and Washington.