Spain to seek closer ties with China despite U.S. ‘cutting own throat’ warning

With Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visiting China for a third time in three years, the relationship between the two nations continues to grow ever closer.

China has invested over 10 billion dollars in Spain over the past three to four years, helping the Spanish economy to grow five times faster than the European average. At the same time Spain buys around 50 billion dollars worth of goods from China each year.

Members of the current U.S. administration are not pleased with this situation, nor with Spanish Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo's suggestion that Europe should more closely align with China.

"That would be cutting your own throat," U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday at a Washington banking event.

Spain's agriculture minister Luis Planas, who is accompanying Sanchez on the official visit to Vietnam and China, responded by saying "We have excellent trade relations with China which we intend to not only continue having, but expanding."

He said the U.S. administration's current mode of negotiations, with its on-again-off-again tariffs, didn't appear to be very "respectful."

"We have trading partners all over the world. We believe in the existence of a rules-based multilateral trade," Planas said.

Vertiginous rise 

The Spanish-Chinese trade relationship is worth around 60 billion U.S. dollars a year and has been on a vertiginous rise over the past decade.

Chinese companies have invested over 10 billion US dollars in Spain over the past three to four years in everything from electric car and battery factories to solar power plants and green hydrogen.

In Barcelona, Chinese EV maker Chery invested in the old Nissan factory, part of a half-a-billion-dollar joint venture with Spanish auto manufacturer Ebro.

Chery's new car brands are the latest to hit European roads.

"Omoda and Jaecoo are the two new brands that entered Spain as the first market in Europe," Francesco Colonnese, Omoda and Jaecoo sales director, told CGTN in the company's flash new offices in Alcorcon, Madrid.

"So Spain is the first one, like the pioneer of the entrance of Omoda and Jaecoo, the two brands in Europe, and what do we want to do? We want to play an important role in the automotive sector."

The Omoda 5 petrol model is a sleek compact SUV with a Range Rover feel, while the Omoda EV5 is an electric SUV packed with cutting edge technology and high spec features.

Hi-tech at low prices has been driving Chinese car sales across the world, with Chery one of China's biggest car manufacturers the largest of the 'big four' state-owned car companies.

Like many other Chinese car makers, it is ramping up exports with over 15 million vehicles sold worldwide, but why did the company choose Spain?

"Spanish customers could be very open to new cars," explained Colonnese. "They don't have the Italian cars, the Italian brands for the Italians, they do not have the German cars for Germans or French for French, they're very open if the car is rather good looking as the Omoda and Jaecoo are, and the price is a good price, a fair price - they will choose you, they will try the new choice."

He added: "Also because from a logistic point of view, it was a very important market to enter in Europe."

Barcelona has the second biggest airport in Spain, one of Europe's top ten largest ports, a highly educated, international workforce, and lower costs than much of the rest of Europe.

Perhaps it's no wonder then that Chery isn't the only Chinese company investing heavily in Spain.

CATL is the biggest electric vehicle battery maker on the planet with a 38 percent market share. It has committed close to five billion dollars to a gigafactory in Zaragoza as part of a joint venture with global automobile giant Stellantis that is set to bring 3,000 direct jobs and a million EV batteries a-year by 2028.

Envision and Hygreen are two Chinese companies putting up three billion US dollars-plus to help Spain achieve its dream of becoming a green hydrogen hub, and China's Three Gorges power company just bought Europe's biggest solar plant in January 2025 in Murcia, southeastern Spain, for around half-a-billion dollars.

Now, with both BYD, the company that sells more electric vehicles than Tesla - or anyone else for that matter - and MG reportedly scouting European sites for new megafactories, Sanchez' message in Beijing is without doubt: Mi casa es tu casa (My house is your house).