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MADRID (AP) — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez criticized Elon Musk on Wednesday as he joined European leaders who are are voicing concerns that the immensely wealthy backer of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is trying to influence politics across the Atlantic.
Sánchez, a leading European socialist, told a public audience in a speech in Madrid that Musk was working against liberal and progressive values.
Sánchez said during an event to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco that the international far right “openly attacks our institutions, stirs up hatred.” He said the movement was being “led in this case by the richest man on the planet,” referring to Musk but not directly calling him by name. He also said the movement was backing a far-right party in Germany that he described as “inheritors of Nazism.”
Via a steady stream of posts and re-posts on his own X social media platform, Musk has waded into European politics since backing and funding Trump’s successful campaign in November. The Tesla and SpaceX chief executive has endorsed the far-right Alternative for Germany and called British Prime Minister Keir Starmer an evil tyrant who should be in prison, among other moves.
Musk also touched on Spanish social affairs earlier this week when he retweeted a post of a Spanish newspaper report regarding an alleged increase in sexual offenders who were foreigners in Spain’s northeast Catalonia region around Barcelona. His only written comment was “Wow.”
Catalonia’s regional president, Salvador Illa, a member of Sánchez’s Socialist party, said in an apparent response to Musk’s post that “we can’t allow ourselves to fall into the hands of a tech multi-millionaire aligned with the far right.”
Musk has shown a heightened interest in sexual abuse cases above all in England, saying Starmer failed to bring perpetrators to justice when he was England’s director of public prosecutions.
