Spain is the penultimate NATO country when it comes to investing in defence. It is only behind Luxembourg, which occupies the last place. According to data from the Atlantic Alliance, the Spanish Government allocated 1.01% of GDP to military expenditure in 2022, far from the 2% target set by the allies.
This low investment in defense in Spain in the last decade has left certain capabilities of the armed forces very limited, if not suspended. Experts believe that, despite the investment effort in the sector announced by Pedro Sánchez, the accumulated deficits are so high that it will take a long time to be aligned with NATO partners.
All this, according to several sources consulted by this newspaper, has resulted, among other examples, in the lack of precision artillery, the disappearance of maritime surveillance aircraft or the fact that it is very difficult to complete the provision of a warship, even to perform ordinary services.
The commitment to reach a mandatory 2% investment in military expenditure was solemnly agreed by all the countries of the Atlantic Alliance in 2014. Ten years were set, which will be reached in the coming year, in 2024. for all its members to get there. Despite the notable increase in military spending in the last general State budgets, Spain will not reach 2% of GDP in defense next year. It is not possible. Government forecasts indicate that it will be achieved in 2029.
Spain has been in the queue for military investment among NATO members, in proportion to its size, for years. However, it is not the only member country of the Atlantic club that has not fulfilled its word.
Taking 2022 NATO data, countries comparable to Spain in size gave these percentages of military investment over their GDP: France (1.90), Germany (1.44), Italy (1.54) and the United Kingdom (2.12). The European country that allocated the most to defense spending that year was Greece (3.76), surpassing even the United States (3.47).
Spain has not made investments in defense corresponding to 2% of GDP since 1994, when Felipe González was president. Since then and until now, this figure, commonly accepted among NATO countries as the minimum, and which the United States has demanded from its partners many times, has never been achieved. As an added fact, it should be noted that the year in which the highest percentage of GDP was dedicated to military spending in Spain was 1984, with an unimaginable 3% today.
The last investment effort, never reaching 2% in 1994, was during the term of President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. From 2008, the investment deficit gradually began to worsen.
"The governments of Mariano Rajoy were disastrous for the defense sector. Instead of devoting himself to slimming public administrations or eliminating duplication, something that would have meant great savings in times of crisis, he cut defense spending to unprecedented levels. Defense has not been and is not a priority issue on the Spanish political agenda", explains the professor of international law at the University of La Laguna, expert in conflict theory and geostrategy, Luis V. Pérez Gil.
"There has been a chronic deficit. It is spent on personnel and maintenance, but it is not enough for the acquisition of new capabilities", comments the lieutenant general of the Land Army in the reserve, Francisco Gan Pampols, to La Vanguardia. In addition, the budgets of the Ministry of Defense are greatly compromised because extraordinary appropriations for the development of programs for the acquisition of new materials and systems that were agreed in the late 1990s and early 2000s are becoming millionaires, as Javier Jordán, professor of Political Science at the University of Granada and director of the digital publication Global Strategy, reminds this newspaper.
