Since his arrival at the White House, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on NATO members to make defense spending 5% of the country’s gross domestic product. Traditionally, NATO members have pledged to have military spending at least 2% of the country’s gross domestic product, but in recent months the leader of this alliance, Mark Rutt, has complied with Trump’s demands: at the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, between January 20 and 24, he declared that the budget for Defense should be “much higher.”The President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, also presented at the beginning of March the rearmed Europe plan, which aims to allocate 800 billion euros to the armaments industry.

Currently, among the 32 countries that make up NATO, the expenditure destined to the Defense of the 23 exceeds 2% of the domestic product of the state. One of the nine that do not reach this figure is Spain: According to the Juan Sebastián Elcano Institute, although it increased its military budget by more than 10 billion euros from 2014 to 2024, last year it spent 1.28% of its gross domestic product on Defensa. Well, President Pedro Sánchez has announced that they will obey the orders of the United States and NATO and that by the end of 2025 they will allocate an additional 10,471 million euros to military spending, which will reach 2% of the country’s gross domestic product: a total of 33,123 million euros.

This measure, agreed by the Spanish government at the Council of Ministers held on Tuesday, argues Sánchez, is aimed at "guaranteeing the security of Spain" and "modernizing" the resources of the country's army. In fact, the President of the Spanish Government has stated that he wants to increase the number of soldiers in the army in the coming years and comply with a "historical demand" of the military: "This investment will serve to improve the working conditions of the troops and the resources of the army, which will ultimately lead to the equalization of Spanish soldiers with those of other European countries."

Condemnation of the Governors

In a press conference after the Council of Ministers, Sánchez acknowledged that there had been "disagreements" between several co-governors about the measure. In fact, the news agency Europa Press has received statements from the Spanish Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, who considers that the increase in military spending is "disproportionate" to what Sánchez announced, noting that this decision has been agreed without taking into account and without reflecting on "the real needs for the defense of Spain".

In addition to the current PSOE governors, the latest increase in the military budget has also been criticized by former governors: The leader of the Podemos party, Ione Belarra, who formed a coalition with the Socialists between 2020 and 2023, has called on the population to mobilize against this measure: "I call on the citizens who mobilized against the invasion of Iraq to mobilize again." In addition, he explains that his party would not participate in any way in the government that has carried out "the biggest increase in the Spanish military budget of all time". However, with Podemos as part of the Spanish government, spending on Defensa increased by 45%.