Pedro Sánchez arrived in Beijing on April 14, 2026 to a full military honours reception and left having signed nineteen bilateral agreements with China — covering trade, technology, green energy, infrastructure, and a new Strategic Diplomatic Dialogue Mechanism that formalises regular top-level engagement between Madrid and Beijing. It was his fourth visit in four years. The message was difficult to ignore.
Sánchez is not a Eurosceptic. He leads a government firmly anchored in EU and NATO structures. His visit to Beijing did not represent a departure from Western institutions. It represented something arguably more significant: a growing recognition, visible even within the European mainstream, that those institutions are no longer sufficient on their own to deliver what European economies actually need.
That recognition is increasingly linked in some analyses to developments within Brussels itself.
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