Europeans Are Very Angry at Trump But Often Are Forgiving of Americans

 By Jason Horowitz

Reporting from Granada, Spain.

New York Times

A retired psychiatrist sipped his morning café con leche in a corner bar in Granada, Spain, a city teeming with American tourists and students, as he followed a debate this week in the Spanish Parliament over the economic consequences of President Trump’s war in Iran.

He shook his head.

“Trump is beyond the pale,” said Jesús Tello, 75, a conservative voter who diagnosed the U.S. president as a “pathological narcissist” who did not care about the consequences of his actions and only saw enemies. But his dim view of the American president did not, Mr. Tello said, extend to all the Americans who had the “bad luck” of living with Mr. Trump.

“Americans are always welcome,” he said.

In 2003, the buildup to the United States-led invasion of Iraq prompted a groundswell of anti-American sentiment among Europeans who resented President George W. Bush for trying to drag their nations into a quagmire. Across Europe, mass antiwar demonstrations directed anger at Mr. Bush that at times seeped into a broader rage at America.

This time, there is a different, less hostile, mood, on the Continent’s streets — even if some Americans have expressed fears of a backlash. Demonstrations have been few and small. While polls across Europe show deep disapproval for Mr. Trump and for a war that risks destabilizing Europe’s economy and security, Europeans, at least for now, are often distinguishing between the American leader and the American people in their bistros, shops, cathedrals and tourist attractions. 

“It’s good to separate the two,” said Alessandro Zanuso, 29, a graphic designer in Paris.

Unlike Mr. Trump, the Bush administration spent months making a case, misleading though it was, to bring Congress, the American people and world leaders aboard before going to war. Mr. Trump did not seek approval from Congress or the United Nations, or even consult in advance with U.S. lawmakers or European allies. He brazenly broke his “no new wars” promises, and upset much of his own base by joining Israel’s attack on Iran.

As a result, people across the Continent said this week, Europeans don’t have the feeling that Mr. Trump has his country behind him. That distance, they said, removed some of the stain of war from the visitors on their shores. Instead of the jingoism of the Iraq War era and talk of American exceptionalism, they saw chastened American visitors keeping their politics, and in some cases nationalities, on the down low.

“I met a lot of Americans who said they were from Canada,” said Robert Lewis, 65, from Cardiff, Wales, as he stood beside Granada’s cathedral. “They don’t want to own up to it.”

Cyril Pasteyer, 24, headwaiter at a Paris restaurant, said he had noticed that Americans were reticent to talk about the situation back home.

In Brussels, David Sastre, 45, who drives tourists around in a carriage, said that sometimes Americans apologized to him for being American. He assured them, he said, that Europeans like “99.999 percent of Americans.” For him, Mr. Trump seemed to fall in the 0.001 percent. “It’s the head of state that is the problem,” he said. 

That feeling may even be spreading to Mr. Trump’s nominal allies in Europe, like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy. This week, Ms. Meloni lost a referendum on her plan to overhaul Italy’s judiciary. As the race tightened in the days before the vote, she was hardly helped, some experts said, by her closeness to Mr. Trump, who is increasingly unpopular for his tariffs, his anti-European bombast and the rising energy prices brought on by the war.

Some supporters of Mr. Trump in Europe are standing by him. Yves Souvenir, 57, a member of the American Club of Brussels, proposed that the club organize a social event called “Epic Fury,” named for the military mission in Iran, “to celebrate the administration.” Mr. Souvenir has not yet received a response from the club leadership, he said this week.

But other Trump fans in Europe feel disoriented by his administration’s unexpected adventurism.

“Crazy people,” said Sergio Urquiza, 19, a supporter of Spain’s far-right party Vox and, until the war in Iran, of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Urquiza wore a NASA backpack decorated with an American flag as he walked in Granada to a children’s religious procession in advance of Holy Week. Mr. Urquiza worried about the war raising gas prices, and causing needless suffering in Iran and the world. Still, he said he didn’t hold that against the American students who came to his town.

“We distinguish,” Mr. Urquiza said.

Some American tourists who had girded for a chilly welcome instead appreciated Europe’s warm embrace. 

John Martin, 46, said that if he could have predicted the war in Iran, which he didn’t think was a good idea, he probably wouldn’t have brought his family from Arkansas to Spain.

But as Mr. Martin and his family descended Granada’s Alhambra, the walled fortress housing magnificent late medieval Moorish palaces and gardens, he joked that everyone seemed “happy to accept our money.”

His wife, Allison, said the couple and their two children had not felt “any animosity at all,” as they toured the country. Spaniards seemed to understand, they said, that many Americans were as vexed by Mr. Trump as they were.

“It’s a temporary moment in time,” said Mr. Martin, traditionally a Republican voter, but with strong doubts about Mr. Trump. “Hopefully.”

American expats said they had received empathy more than condemnation. Katherine Wilson, a writer and actress living in Rome, said she was experiencing less anti-American sentiment than during the Iraq war. Italy has a long history of questionable leadership, going back to at least the Roman Empire, and Italians “would be really in bad shape” if judged by their leaders, she said. Italians now have a message, she said, of “oh man, we know what it’s like to have a leader who does things we don’t agree with.” 

Not everyone was so understanding.

“I am upset with both Trump and the American people,” said Selvi Kilicarslan, 55, who lives in southern Turkey, which has come under sporadic missile fire from Iran. The nearby Incirlik air base hosts American forces.

Ute Gervink, 55, a goldsmith in Berlin, feared the consequences of Mr. Trump’s war and felt Americans should “share the blame because, of course, they elected a man who is completely unpredictable. And they knew that.”

Up on the Alhambra, Ana Maria Valdivieso, 33, struck a similar note about American voters.

“Did they really think Trump was not going to start a war?” she said. “I can’t understand why they believed him.”