Spain’s government has mistaken Israeli restraint for weakness. After years of diplomatic insults, embargoes, canceled defense deals, downgrades, and moral preening, Jerusalem should stop acting as if the old relationship with Madrid still exists. It does not.

If Pedro Sánchez keeps escalating against Israel, Jerusalem should stop whining and start imposing costs: back self-determination for Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia; make clear Ceuta and Melilla are not automatically shielded by NATO’s Article 5; expose whatever can be exposed about Sánchez’s bugged phone after Morocco’s Pegasus-linked espionage; embargo Spain militarily; cut its access to Israeli technology; and build with Spain’s pro-Israel camp instead of wasting time on Sánchez’s anti-Israel machine. It is time to foster, promote, and approve the “Sánchez Act” at the Knesset.

This would not be an attack on Spain’s people, culture, or history. Spain is a serious country with a great civilization and millions of citizens who did not choose to turn their government into a platform for anti-Israel grandstanding. The problem is the regime in Madrid. Sánchez has made hostility to Israel its scapegoat “cutting-edge” foreign policy milestone. Jerusalem can keep absorbing it, or it can begin imposing costs.

The hypocrisy is plain. Sánchez lectures Israel about “colonialism” while Spain still holds two colonial remnants on the North African coast: Ceuta and Melilla. A government that clings to imperial leftovers while sermonizing to the Jewish state about legitimacy deserves pressure, not deference.

Israel should openly say that Spanish sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla is not beyond challenge. If Madrid insists on politicizing Israel’s borders and legitimacy, then it should lose the privilege of having its own territorial sensitivities treated as untouchable.

That pressure point is not rhetorical. NATO’s Article 5 has never been as ironclad for Ceuta, Melilla, and even the Canary Islands as Spanish posturing suggests. Spain talks as if every inch of its territory were under an unquestioned alliance guarantee due to its NATO and European Union membership, but it is not. That ambiguity is leverage.

That is why Morocco matters, and why Israel should deepen its strategic understanding with Rabat. A Spain whose most exposed territories sit under legal and strategic uncertainty should think twice before provoking a country like Israel. And if that pressure came with Moroccan backing, public or private, Sánchez would likely stay quiet. The Pegasus affair already showed why.

Sánchez’s disloyalty to his own people is so profound that, after Morocco spied on him using the Israeli-made Pegasus software, he suddenly and unexpectedly reversed forty years of Spanish policy on the Western Sahara in barely two weeks—likely fearing that Moroccan intelligence had uncovered information he could not afford to have exposed.

The self-determination issue cuts even deeper. Sánchez’s camp loves the language of national rights when the target is Israel. It becomes far less eloquent when the nations in question are Catalans, Basques, or Galicians under Spain’s own flag.

So let Madrid live under the standard it tries to impose on others. If Spain wants to weaponize self-determination against Israel, then Israel should answer by affirming that Catalans, Basques, and Galicians also have the right to determine their political future. That would not require immediate recognition of independent states. In some ways, that would be less effective. What matters is ending Israel’s automatic silence over Spain’s internal contradictions.

Madrid cannot champion nationalist claims abroad while denying national claims at home and attacking the only democratic, sovereign, and militarily capable Jewish state in the Middle East. That game should end.

The military response should be direct as well. Spain moved to block Israeli defense systems and disrupted up to nineteen contracts, including the Spike anti-tank missile and SILAM rocket launcher programs, worth roughly $1.4 billion. Yet Madrid still expects to enjoy indirect access to Israeli-linked technology through wider European frameworks. That should stop.

No privileged access to advanced Israeli systems. No easy path into sensitive dual-use cooperation. No arrangement in which Spain demonizes Israel in public while quietly benefiting from Israeli innovation when useful. If Sánchez wants distance from Israel, Jerusalem should make that distance real.

Israel should also stop fooling itself about which Spanish political actors are worth cultivating. “Together for Catalonia” backed an arms embargo against Israel, exposing how shallow its supposed pragmatism really was. The Basque Nationalist Party is no better if its real function is to keep Sánchez’s coalition alive. Jerusalem should stop chasing unreliable intermediaries and start building ties with forces that still understand borders, sovereignty, civilizational confidence, and the Islamist threat.

That means openly engaging figures such as Sílvia Orriols and Aliança Catalana (the fastest growing conservative force in Catalonia) rather than pretending Spain’s anti-Israel drift can be managed through the same failed political channels.

Spain is not Sánchez. That is precisely the point. Israel should stop treating the regime and the country as identical. The target should be the government that has spent years humiliating the Jewish state while continuing to enjoy the protections of a Western order Israel has helped defend.

Jerusalem does not need more wounded diplomacy. It needs leverage. And if Sánchez insists on making Spain a hostile actor, Israel should make him pay.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)