You can spend every euro or dollar only once. If you consider CO2 emissions a critical problem, then you should spend every single dollar as efficiently as possible. Obviously independence of fossil fuels has a value too, as the current situation in the middle east shows.

It would make much more sense to import (renewable) electricity from Spain to Germany than strawberries.

No this would not make more sense.

Grids are not set up to move significant percentages of national consumption over longer distances, and expansion is slow, expensive and prone to nimbyism.

Countries already struggle to move electrical energy inside their own borders (e.g. Germany: north=>south), shifting double digit percentages of national consumption across Europe is not gonna happen any time soon. Germany alone plans to spend at least ~€100bn over the next decade on this (internally, not on connecting Spain!).

Much more effective to focus on local generation first than to try and rely on slightly better conditions for solar panels half a continent away.

You shouldn't be spending euros or dollars at all. The economic system is the ideology holding us back.