It was 23 years ago, in February 2003, when that phenomenon that has been called “polarization” had not yet worsened and that has almost sent the great consensuses to the history books. The CIS asked almost 2,500 citizens about the military intervention in Iraq that the George W. Bush Administration was preparing and which was supported by the Government of José María Aznar (PP). And the result was one of those transversal agreements that are so obsolete today. More than nine out of ten rejected war. Furthermore, that data did not remain only on paper. They also took to the streets, with massive demonstrations. Unprecedented avalanche against warheadlined this newspaper on Sunday, February 16, about the protests, which mobilized more than three million people behind the slogan No to war. Just the one that Pedro Sánchez repeated this Wednesday.
In his appearance without questions to explain his decision to prevent the US from using the bases in Rota (Cádiz) and Morón (Seville) for the attack on Iran, which has led Donald Trump to threaten Spain with a trade rupture, Sánchez stated: “The Government’s position is summarized in four words: ‘No to war.’ The president thus brings to the present a historic claim of high symbolic value, especially on the left, which 23 years ago—as now—almost everyone considered a loser in the elections but which united behind a cause and ended up achieving an unexpected victory the following year.
It is a slogan that alludes to several uncomfortable elements for the PP, such as Spain’s support for a US invasion justified by a falsehood – weapons of mass destruction -, the start of a war that left Iraq in chaos and the left’s demonstration of its ability to react and come back. Indirectly, it refers to the subsequent resistance of the Government of José María Aznar and the PP of Mariano Rajoy to recognize the Islamist authorship of the 11-M attacks to prevent said attacks from being linked to Iraq.
“The parallels are so clear that they are made on their own. The president only has to say the four words so that almost everyone remembers both the feeling of unity that that movement provoked and what the Iraq war entailed: an invasion without the approval of the UN, a decade with Europe suffering from terrorism, rising energy prices…”, adds a source from La Moncloa.
“The ‘no to war’ has characteristics to mobilize the left and at least make the right uncomfortable. Among them, it is based on a transversal anti-Americanism that makes it unpopular to appear submissive to the United States. In addition, it benefits from the fact that Donald Trump is a poorly valued figure. But no one expects immediate effects. It is an idea that will take time to make its way and that will not stop some voting trends that favor the right and the extreme right,” says a source familiar with the efforts. Sánchez to connect 2003 with 2026.
“Rebellion” against the PP
Carmen Lumbierres, professor of Political Science at UNED, sees Sánchez’s intentions as “clear” in rescuing the “no to war.” Which is it? “Transfer the emotions of the electorate, especially the progressive, to a moment of rebellion against the lies of the PP and against an unjustified war, establishing a parallel,” he responds. However, he believes that too much time has passed for it to be effective. “Neither the composition of the country is the same, nor the concerns are similar. What pushes the vote to the right, especially among young people, what sets social networks on fire, is not the rejection of submission to the United States or an illegal invasion, but the identity defense of the West against Islam, presented as a threat. Copying as is a slogan from a time when the entire political conversation was different is like rescuing the intellectuals of the eyebrow (favorable to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero) in a campaign,” he develops.
In 2003, Gaspar Llamazares was federal coordinator of IU. And he was one of the faces and voices of “no to war.” Are the situations comparable? In his opinion, yes. “Then, as now, we saw an intervention against a country outside international law. In both cases (Iraq in 2003 and Iran now), these are reprehensible regimes, but they were attacked with arguments that were changing and with justifications that do not hold up, only to reorder the East around the interests of the United States and Israel. If 2003 marked a before and after, now the intervention in Iran, a continuation of that in Gaza, aims to mark another.”
I’ll take it, Bush, Trump
The former IU leader points out that the main difference is that today there is a “world disorder” caused by the “global ultra-right” that did not exist then. A pillar of this “global far-right” is embodied by Trump, a lowly valued figure in Spain. 76.5% of those surveyed by the CIS for its February barometer express negative opinions about him. Almost 80% see it as a danger to world peace. Perceptions about Trump contaminate those held about his country. Between April 2024, with Joe Biden in power, and June 2025, now with Trump, the percentage of those who see the US as a threat to Spain almost quadrupled, going from 5% to 19%, according to the barometers of the Elcano Royal Institute.
Abdón Mateos, professor of Contemporary History at UNED, believes that Trump’s unpopularity is one of the factors that can make the “no to war” effective. But the emphasis is not there. In his opinion, the appeal goes deeper. “In Spain there has always been a pacifist subculture, contrary to war interventions,” says the author of History of the PSOE in transition (1970-1988) e History of the socialist era (1982-1986)one of the main experts on the trajectory of the party of the fist and the rose specifically and of the Spanish left in general. From that condition, he affirms that this “pacifist” substratum has emerged clearly on two occasions: the first, the demonstrations in 1986 against joining NATO; the second, the protests against the Iraq war in 2003. On neither of these two dates, was the position of the PSOE comparable to the current one, with the socialists in the Executive opposing intervention in Iran. In 1986, Felipe González supported remaining in NATO from the presidency. In 2003, Zapatero was in the opposition and took to the streets against the invasion of Iraq. However, Mateos believes that, even chanted from power, the “no to war” has “a very strong pull.”
His colleague Juan Sisinio Pérez Garzón, professor emeritus of History at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, considers that the 2003 demonstrations were an expression of a deeply rooted trait in Spanish political culture: the rejection of American imperialism. “I wouldn’t talk about pacifism as much as anti-imperalism. Because, if you look at it, there hasn’t been a strong reaction to the change in position on the Sahara, which should mobilize a truly pacifist society. And I wouldn’t talk about a rejection of any imperialism either, because the Russian barely gets people out on the streets. The one that causes rejection is the United States, which is the country that we see as a great power. And the opposition is greater if Spain appears as submissive. If the ‘no to war’ of 2003 aroused so much unanimity is because it appealed to a diffuse rejection of US imperialism with origins in the Cuban war, which gives the US a bad reputation even in sectors of the right. That is what Sánchez wants to recover when he now says ‘no to war’,” says Pérez Garzón.
