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Marrakech – US President Donald Trump suggested on Thursday that NATO should consider removing Spain from the alliance over the European country’s refusal to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP.
“We had one laggard. It was Spain,” Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with Finnish President Alexander Stubb. “You have to call them and find why are they a laggard.”
Trump went further with his criticism, adding: “Maybe you should throw them out of NATO, frankly.”
The comments come after NATO members agreed in June to raise military spending to 5% of gross domestic product, a major priority for Trump, who has long insisted that European nations spend more on their own defense.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was the only leader to refuse the 5% target, calling it “incompatible with our welfare state and our world vision.” Instead, Sanchez maintained that his country needs to invest only 2.1% of GDP to meet its defense commitments.
Spain currently ranks among NATO’s lowest spenders, with defense expenditures of less than 1.2% of GDP in 2023, according to the alliance’s figures.
The dispute has festered for months. Following the June NATO summit, Trump called Spain’s position “hostile” and threatened economic consequences, pledging to make the country pay “twice as much” in tariffs to the US.
“I think Spain is terrible, what they’ve done,” Trump said at the time, accusing the country of taking a “free ride” at other countries’ expense.
Spain swiftly responded to Trump’s latest comments. A government source reaffirmed the country’s commitment to the alliance and appealed for calm, adding that Spain meets its capability targets just as the United States does.
“These statements were made in a specific context, but I know for a fact that the U.S. Armed Forces are well aware of Spain’s commitment,” Spain’s Defence Minister Margarita Robles said on Friday, insisting that Spain delivers on its pledges.
Spain joined NATO in 1982, and no member has ever been expelled from the 32-nation alliance.
Spain hides behind NATO to Europeanize African enclaves
The tensions come at a sensitive time for Spain’s interests in North Africa. In late September, a NATO Parliamentary Assembly delegation made an unprecedented visit to Melilla, one of Spain’s enclaves in North Africa claimed by Morocco, further straining relations between Madrid and Rabat.
About 60 parliamentarians from 15 NATO member countries participated in the two-day visit, which Morocco views as a direct challenge to its sovereignty.
This provocative display of European neo-colonialism on Moroccan soil threatens to undermine years of diplomatic progress between Madrid and Rabat. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s visit represents a blatant attempt to legitimize Spain’s anachronistic occupation through international validation.
The historical context reveals the fiction of Spanish claims. Melilla was seized in 1497 in the wake of Granada’s fall, with its capture justified by the colonial language of “civilization” that European powers used to disguise imperial domination.
Far from being integral parts of Spain, Ceuta and Melilla historically carried second-rank status – garrison towns and bargaining chips in Mediterranean power struggles.
Spanish archives themselves expose the fallacy of permanence. The Lisbon Treaty of 1686 first gave nominal recognition, yet for centuries, Madrid considered trading the enclaves to Britain for Gibraltar or abandoning them altogether. In 1811, the Cadiz Cortes even declared they were not Spanish territories and suggested their return to Morocco.
Only in 1913, at the height of European colonialism, did Spain elevate them to “plazas de soberanía” (territories of sovereignty), and not until 1955 – just before Morocco’s independence – were they granted full sovereignty under Madrid’s constitution. Even then, they remained under military administration.
Spain’s claim of “five centuries of uninterrupted sovereignty” is not history but propaganda, a narrative concocted to Europeanize African territory and mask the enclaves’ true status as colonial outposts. For Morocco, these territories were taken by force and have been militarized as European gateways to Africa.
Even within NATO, Spain’s African territories remain a matter of controversy. In 2022, then-NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg clarified that Spain’s “autonomous cities” of Ceuta and Melilla are not automatically protected under Article 5 – the Alliance’s collective defense clause.
This is because Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty explicitly limits the scope of Article 5 to territories in Europe, North America, Turkey, and certain islands under NATO jurisdiction, thereby excluding Spain’s enclaves on the African mainland.
Still, Melilla’s president, Juan José Imbroda, insisted during the NATO delegation’s visit that the city “is covered by NATO’s umbrella” because “it is an integral part of the Spanish State’s territoriality.”
Spain’s colonial hypocrisy reaches staggering proportions when examined alongside its self-righteous posturing on the global stage. The same Spain that parades as a champion of Palestinian liberation stubbornly clings to its colonial possessions in North Africa.
Madrid demands Britain return Gibraltar because it is a foreign enclave on Spanish soil, yet refuses to apply that identical logic to Ceuta and Melilla.
These enclaves stand today as fenced-off colonial territories on African soil, ringed with barbed wire, double fences, and watchtowers – Europe’s militarized southern border posts that undermine Morocco’s customs revenue by an estimated $1.5 billion annually through smuggling operations.
For Morocco, these developments represent potential opportunities to strengthen its position regarding the disputed territories and deepen its strategic partnership with the US at Spain’s expense. Until Ceuta and Melilla are returned, Morocco’s decolonization remains incomplete.
Is Washington considering relocating its bases to Morocco?
Adding to Spain’s challenges, former US defense advisor Robert Greenway proposed on June 27 transferring American military bases from Morón and Rota in Spain to Morocco.
Greenway, who now directs the Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank close to Trump, made the suggestion in response to Spain’s refusal to increase military spending.
“It is time to transfer the bases of Morón and Rota… to Morocco,” Greenway wrote on X.
The military bases at Morón and Rota are strategic American outposts in Europe, established by the Madrid Agreements of 1953, with rapid deployment forces.
Despite Greenway’s suggestion, observers caution that such a move is nearly impossible. Yet nationalist parties such as Vox weaponize these rumors, amplifying the narrative that Morocco is a looming danger – a rhetoric serving nothing beyond short-term gains in polls and electoral politics.
As Institut Géopolitique Horizons explained in an April analysis entitled “La Base de Rota au Maroc: l’Impossible Transfert,” several structural and strategic factors prevent Washington and Rabat from ever pursuing this scenario.
First, Morocco has long maintained a doctrine of rejecting permanent foreign military bases on its soil, rooted in the traumatic memory of the 1972 coup attempt against King Hassan II, when rebel pilots used aircraft from a joint US-Moroccan base at Kenitra.
Morocco has since cooperated closely with the US but only under frameworks that safeguard sovereignty, such as joint exercises like African Lion, rather than permanent installations.
Read also: Spanish Media Frets Over Morocco Apache Acquisition
Second, the US itself is pivoting strategically toward the Indo-Pacific, investing heavily in naval and air power across Japan, Guam, and the Philippines. Analysts argue that building a massive new base in North Africa contradicts this strategic reorientation, especially when Rota already fulfills its logistical and operational roles for US and NATO forces.
Third, the ongoing €300 million expansion of Rota – aimed at doubling its capacity and allowing the base to host six destroyers by 2026 – underscores Washington’s long-term commitment to Spain.
Local officials, including Rota’s mayor, Javier Ruiz, have confirmed there are no signs of a US withdrawal; instead, infrastructure projects continue to expand the base’s role in NATO defense architecture.
Finally, Morocco’s own “Doctrine of Abidjan,” articulated by King Mohammed VI in 2014, emphasizes African sovereignty and South-South cooperation. Hosting a US base would directly contradict this principle, undermining Rabat’s credibility across the continent, where it has carefully positioned itself as a leader of decolonization and independence movements.
