“No wonder Musk hates Sánchez.”
There’s an old rule in politics: when the ultra-wealthy hard right is outraged, you may well be doing something right.
That appeared to be the case when Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of X, launched an online attack against Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez. Writing on his own platform, Musk branded Sánchez a “true fascist totalitarian” and, in a “tyrant and a traitor to the people of Spain.”
The outburst followed Sánchez’s announcement that Spain intends to ban social media use for children under 16 and require platforms to introduce robust age-verification systems. His government is also preparing legislation that would hold social media executives accountable for illegal and hateful content hosted on their platforms.
“Social media has become a failed state, where laws are ignored and crimes are tolerated,” Sánchez said, pledging to protect young people from what he described as a digital “Wild West.”
He also accused Musk’s platform of amplifying disinformation surrounding his administration’s recent decision to regularise roughly half a million undocumented workers and asylum seekers, pointing out that Musk himself is a migrant.
Musk’s response was characteristically incendiary. Yet the tone of his intervention appeared to galvanise support for Sánchez rather than weaken it. Social media users mocked the spectacle of a billionaire who controls a global communications platform accusing a democratically elected leader of fascism. Others praised Sánchez’s willingness to confront powerful tech interests.
Among those weighing in was Jeremy Cliffe, editorial director and senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Cliffe highlighted the Spanish government’s record under Sánchez: presiding over one of Europe’s fastest-growing economies, raising the minimum wage from €736 to €1,221, reducing insecure work, regularising migrants rather than demonising them, and maintaining a firm position on human rights.
Far from the economic malaise that followed the 2008 financial crisis, Spain today is widely seen as an economic success story within the European Union. In 2024, the country’s GDP grew by 3.2%, and the Economist ranked Spain as the best-performing rich economy of the year among members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Analysts attribute much of this growth to Spain’s liberal immigration policy, which has helped expand the workforce and sustain economic momentum. Even critics of pro-immigration arguments have acknowledged the connection between Spain’s economic resurgence, an influx of new workers, a thriving tourism sector and lower energy prices.
This broader context makes Musk’s fury easier to interpret. The grievance at the heart of his attack, stricter digital regulation and greater corporate accountability, forms part of a wider Spanish policy agenda that prioritises social protection, labour security and managed migration. For supporters, it represents a vision of an internet and an economy structured around public interest rather than private power.
As Jeremy Cliffe put it: “No wonder that Musk hates Sánchez.”
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