Spain’s prime minister joins foreign leaders concerned with Musk’s interest in European politics

MADRID — 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. 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. 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.