Pedro Sanchez urged the bloc’s leaders to respond with “unwavering solidarity” the death toll in his country continues to rise and its hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. Madrid, alongside Rome, have called on European capitals to agree a joint debt scheme to help prop up the bloc’s worst-affected economies. But the desperate requests have fallen on deaf ears in Germany and the Netherlands, who have rejected the so-called “coronabonds” measure on numerous occasions.