By what realistic measure did AEDE expect Google to pay, when it outright stated that it'd shut down in Germany before paying? Did they expect Spain to be different?
Basically, yes, they thought that Spain would be different.
I think their assumption was that the Germans were a bunch of savages squatting in the ruins of a civilization that could safely be ignored, but that SPAIN! was still the center of civilized culture in the world, and therefore the rules were different.
I think they thought that Spain would be different because surely Google couldn't refuse to show snippets for all Spanish publishers. They assumed the German ruling didn't have the same clout because obviously many publishers would opt out.
Alternatively, I've seen it suggested that the Spanish knew exactly what would happen, and it's what they wanted. Or, more precisely, it's what the big, influential publishers wanted, because their size allows them to attract more visitors directly to their home pages, at the expense of smaller publishers. Another Slashdot poster claimed that it was political horse trading between big news organizations who are pro-government and the government to shut out smaller (and anti-government) news organizations, with an understanding that if the change hurt the big orgs too badly, the government would funnel cash to them to prop them up.
I don't know anything about Spanish politics, but those possibilities seem believable, and perhaps more believable than that Spanish lawmakers didn't believe Google would just shut down Google News in Spain.