Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez traveled to on Wednesday to meet with British counterpart .
This marks the first bilateral meeting between the heads of government of the two countries since 2017.
It comes after of this year, five years after it left the bloc.
The UK and Spain have also moved to iron out disagreements around the British enclave of Gibraltar. London and Madrid announced in June that they had agreed to remove border checks between Gibraltar and Spain, while also allowing the territory to enter a customs union with the EU.
What will Sanchez and Starmer talk about at 10 Downing Street?
The two leaders are likely to discuss strengthening trade ties and also geopolitical questions such as the wars in Ukraine and in the Gaza Strip.
The United Kingdom is the largest destination for Spanish goods outside of the EU, with export volume reaching 24.4€ billion (%28.5 billion) in 2024.
Sanchez is scheduled to attend a meeting with British and Spanish companies at Starmer’s Downing Street office, Spanish daily El Pais reported. Among the firms to attend are Spanish bank Santander as well as British energy giant BP and the pharmaceuticals company AstraZeneca.
On Ukraine, Starmer has spearheaded an attempt to gather a “coalition of the willing” to provide security guarantees for Kyiv. Sanchez has been somewhat more ambivalent, arguing that .
Western policy on Gaza a ‘failure’ — Sanchez
Ahead of the Wednesday meeting, Sanchez said that Western countries’ policies toward have been a “failure,” saying they risked losing their standing in the world.
“At the end of the day, the world is looking at the EU and also at Western society and asking: ‘Why are you doing double standards when it comes to Ukraine and when it comes to Gaza?’,” he said in comments to British daily The Guardian, adding the West could lose “credibility when it comes to other crises, such as the one we face in Ukraine.”
Spain was , a move London has been reluctant to carry out. Sanchez has also .
Edited by: Jenipher Camino Gonzalez
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