After months of tension, it's back to normal. Donald Trump greeted Pedro Sánchez this Monday in Egypt as if nothing had happened after threatening to withdraw Spain from NATO. The US president shook the Spanish prime minister's hand, even showing a friendly gesture and a smile, four days after the president said at the White House that perhaps Spain should be expelled from NATO for refusing to accept the 5% increase in defense spending.
The government responded to Trump's remarks to the Finnish president by assuring him that"Spain is a loyal partner and a full member of NATO, and it will continue to be so." Sources at the Moncloa Palace indicated that the brief meeting was "friendly, cordial, and polite."
Later, at the summit, Trump, with the leaders in tow, delivered positive messages one by one. Upon arriving in Spain, he looked for Sánchez."Where is Spain?" he turned, looking for Pedro Sánchez."Are you trying to convince him [Pedro Sánchez] about the GDP? We'll get closer." "We'll get closer, we'll get closer. What a fantastic job you're doing," the president said, referring to the controversy over Spain's economic contribution to NATO. Trump thus downplayed the controversy and seemed to open the door to understanding with Spain after having threatened to expel it from NATO or impose harsh tariffs, which he later forgot about.
The American leader, who arrived in Egypt from Israel much late, greeted and welcomed one by one the thirty leaders who attended the peace summit in Sharm el Sheikh, convened under the slogan Peace 2025, before the family photo and the signing of the plan, which includes 20 points for ending the war in the Gaza Strip.
The greeting between Sánchez and Trump, barely 15 seconds long, is the first video-enhanced greeting between the two since Trump returned to the White House. The American gave Sánchez a gentle tug on his arm, and the Spaniard briefly placed his hand on the American president's back. This Monday, Sánchez also greeted the summit's host and co-organizer, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
📺 LIVE TV | Donald Trump and Pedro Sánchez shake hands at the summit on the Gaza peace plan https://t.co/dIK690KXrx
— EL PAÍS (@el_pais) October 13, 2025
Trump and Sánchez also met in 2019 in Osaka, Japan, for the G20 meeting. On that occasion, the American president made an ambiguous gesture to Sánchez: As he passed by him, he pointed to his seat. The Moncloa (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) assured that"the whole episode" had been "a joke" because Trump wasn't ordering Sánchez to sit down, but simply told him he had"a good spot."
The two leaders also greeted each other in 2018 in New York, on the occasion of the United Nations General Assembly, although only a photograph emerged from that meeting, in which Trump and Sánchez appeared accompanied by their wives, Melania Trump and Begoña Gómez. Sources from the Spanish delegation reported that contact between Trump and Sánchez, who have never held a bilateral meeting, was limited to a mere formal greeting at a reception for international leaders attending the UN assembly.
Sánchez arrived at the summit on Egyptian soil after being one of the European presidents who most clearly condemned Israel's"genocide" in Gaza, as he calls it, but now that there has been a peace agreement, the president celebrated it -"Spain welcomes the peace proposal for Gaza promoted by the US. We must put an end to so much suffering," he said - and applauded the work of Trump, from whom he is very politically distanced, although the images and Trump's words at this summit show that the tension is much less intense than it might seem.
