- NATO member States, under the mandate of the Atlantic Alliance Directorate, have had to significantly increase defence budgets and send arms to the places of conflict that the organization has pointed out. Thanks to these budgetary increases, the Basque Country’s shallow companies are further enriching: SAPA, Sener, ITP Aero and Aernnova are some of them.
The 20 exit tanks from Santurtzi to Ukraine have been under the orders of the SAPA company of the Aperribay family. Soraluze’s company has been in charge of the machinery propulsion mechanism, manufacturing chains and filming tools, in collaboration with groups such as Santa Barbara, Indra or Escribano. The newspaper El Correo has announced that the Spanish Government has asked these companies for 348 tank units for a total amount of EUR 2.1 billion (more than EUR 6 million of public money per tank).
But it will triple its demand by 2023. As stated in that article, at the end of the year, the Ministry of Defence intends to have 1,000 tanks for a total amount of over EUR 6 billion.
The economic development of the company SAPA, led by the Aperribay family, is very clarifying and, although on this occasion it sells them to the Spanish Government, it exports a great deal abroad. In fact, in 2015, exports accounted for only 0.82% of total revenue, more than half by 2020, 60.73%. These and other data are collected in the book "La sapa de los Aperribay", published by the Antimilitarist movement, collected in ARGIA in this report.
War drones of eleven tons manufactured in Bizkaia
Sener is the company running the European Inter-Company Defence Fund and Europe aims to create autonomous vehicles or drones through Air ITP, a large drone with eleven tons each. Until now, ITP Aerial, based in the Zamudio Technology Park, is dedicated to the manufacture of the engines of the Eurofighter war aircraft, one of the most used and innovative models to date. The aim of these companies is to market driverless aircraft by European mandate.
In addition, the aeronautical company Aernnova is involved. Aernnova maintains and designs about 30 models of military aircraft, including the Eurofighter. The Spanish Ministry of Defence will increase demand in 2023 and in the coming years.
Spanish military spending has increased by 42% over the past three years
By NATO mandate, by 2030, all Member States set the defence budget at a minimum of 2% of GDP. In the case of the Spanish State, for example, investment will have to be considerably increased in order to reach that minimum, since in autumn of last year it was only around 1%.
For this reason, by 2023, military spending in the Spanish State increased by 25.8%, from 9,791 million euros in 2022 to 12,317 million. Part of the budget will go towards increasing military salaries, but the other majority will sign agreements with the arms industry and invest in innovation.