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The real reason Trump and Spain are at constant loggerheads, according to leading expat geopolitical analyst

YOU moved to Spain for the sunshine, lifestyle and food, but the world came with you.

The rising cost of living, spiking energy bills, political instability and now, if you’ve been following the news, something else: a public confrontation between the governments in Madrid and Washington.

It came to a head after Spain refused to commit 5 per cent of GDP to NATO defence spending, citing its social programme needs.

It also refused American requests for military access to its air bases for operations against Iran.

Washington’s response was immediate and public – criticism, trade pressure and the unmistakable implication that Spain is ‘failing its obligations’ to the Western alliance.

Most coverage has treated this as a diplomatic disagreement.

It isn’t, argues Richard Cowl. It is the long game operating in plain sight.

For the past two years, Cowl has been writing and recording a documentary podcast series, The Long Game, under the channel name The Iceberg Below.

READ MORE: OPINION: Thank goodness Spain put Argentina in their place after Trump and Infantino’s World Cup fiasco, writes Charlie Mullins

The series asks a simple question: what is really driving world events beneath the news cycle, political speeches and official explanations?

His answer is a financial and institutional architecture that most people never see – because it operates well below the waterline.

Cowl traces its roots to late 19th-century Oxford University and the ideas of John Ruskin.

His 1870 inaugural lecture inspired a generation of students to view British imperial values as a civilising mission worth........

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