"Spain fulfills its commitment to NATO." The Government boasts after the report from the Atlantic Alliance estimating that the country will reach a military expenditure this year equivalent to 2% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). According to these preliminary data, national defense spending will have grown by over 43% compared to 2024, increasing from 22.6 billion euros to 33.1 billion this year. A figure that allows Spain to reach for the first time the spending target agreed upon by the Member States at the 2014 Cardiff Summit for the following decade. However, the NATO report exposes the recruitment problems in the Armed Forces that the country faces, which has seen a decrease of 3,600 personnel since then. From 121,800 military personnel ten years ago to the current 118,200.
The Alliance's statement coincided with the visit of Defense Minister Margarita Robles to Berlin on Thursday, where she held a press conference with her German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, just a day after Chancellor Friedrich Merz's government approved a bill to reintroduce military service, initially voluntary but with the option to make it mandatory again if necessary.
Robles ruled out the possibility of the Pedro Sánchez government considering a measure similar to the one that will now need to be ratified by the Bundestag: "We support the system we currently have, Germany has its model and Spain has its own," she concluded.
Spain is the eighth country with the largest contingent of uniformed personnel among the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, behind the United States (1,300,000), Turkey (494,500), Poland (233,800), France (204,700), Germany (186,400), Italy (171,200), and the United Kingdom (138,100), and ahead of Greece (111,700) or Canada (77,100).
From this top 10, Spain is the third European country that has lost the most military personnel since 2014. Only the United Kingdom (30,600 fewer personnel) and Italy (12,300) have experienced a greater reduction in their ranks, although their Armies remain larger in number than the Spanish. Except for the United States (which had 38,000 more military personnel a decade ago, but whose numbers are still far ahead), the rest of the countries have increased their Armed Forces, and in some cases, significantly, such as Poland, which had 99,000 uniformed personnel in 2014.
Last May, the president of the Military Life Observatory, Mariano Casado, expressed concern about the recruitment processes for the basic scale (Troops and Seamen) in the Defense Commission of the Congress of Deputies, during the presentation of the annual report for 2023. In recent statements to EL MUNDO, the head of this advisory body of the General Courts lamented that "there is much talk about large programs and defense spending, but not about personnel."
"A newly graduated lieutenant earns less than a Civil Guard in the same situation," Casado pointed out as an example of a common factor "in all scales" contributing to "discontent and demoralization." One of the identified problems is the number of job openings being lower than the number of departures due to contract expiration or loss of psychophysical aptitudes.
In addition, Spain faces a demographic outlook that does not allow for a change in trend, as the progressive aging of the population will reduce the potential pool of candidates to join the military career.
The NATO report data reflect that Spanish military spending has been reducing the proportion allocated to personnel in recent years. If in 2014 it represented 67.3%, today it does not reach 28% including pensions. 35.3% corresponds to missions and related expenses, 32.3% to equipment and research, and 4.6% to infrastructure.
The intertwined economic crises following the COVID pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine led to a change in priorities in public spending. At the NATO summit held in Madrid in June 2022, Sánchez announced a progressive increase in Spain's military spending with the aim of reaching that percentage by 2029. However, the return of Donald Trump to the White House and the continuity of the conflict in Eastern Europe accelerated demands for compliance earlier this year.
With estimated data from 2024 and 2025, NATO indicates that all its members, except Iceland, which does not have Armed Forces, already meet the Cardiff spending target, when last year only 19 out of 31 achieved this milestone. At the Welsh summit, only the United States, Greece, and the United Kingdom exceeded 2%.
Alongside Spain in this percentage are Belgium, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, and Portugal, while another dozen countries have defense spending between 2% and 2.1% of their GDP.
Last April, Sánchez launched the Industrial and Technological Plan for the Security and Defense of Spain and Europe as a way to increase from 1.4% of the GDP in Security and Defense in 2024 to 2% this year. An additional investment of 10.47 billion euros on top of what was already allocated to these policies, ensuring that it would not involve tax increases, higher public deficit, or reduced investment in the welfare state.
The agreement of the Council of Ministers came after Trump's threats to leave NATO if its partners did not commit to balancing military spending and after the approval of the rearmament plan agreed upon by the European Union, with the relaxation of fiscal rules for countries to invest massively in the military field or the creation of a 150 billion euro loan instrument.
At the latest NATO summit held in June in The Hague (Netherlands), Sánchez distanced himself from the 5% of GDP investment target in Defense by 2035, as demanded by the United States (3.5% in direct investment and 1.5% in security-related expenses). The Prime Minister stated that with 2.1%, the country "will be able to maintain all the personnel, equipment, and infrastructure required by the Alliance to address potential threats." Spain's per capita spending is $676 per inhabitant, far from the US, which nearly quadruples it with $2,470, or Poland, which with its strong growth exceeds 940.
However, the 2% target already posed a problem for the head of the Government in April, both with Sumar, his coalition partner, and with several parties that supported his investiture. The Government's intention to present a General State Budget will face one of its main obstacles in this matter, with groups like Podemos, which sets as a red line for dialogue any increase in military spending, an issue where other left-wing bloc parties, such as Esquerra Republicana, EH Bildu, or BNG, do not align with the PSOE, or where Junts demands that part of the increased defense investment be reinvested in Catalonia.