Pedro Sánchez announced the brutal increase in Spain's arms spending. With a funeral face. It's understandable: it's a counterproductive policy for the image the Spanish president has long been working to build, as a progressive leader who resists the onslaught of internal and external neo-fascist waves. More specifically, it creates internal problems and unrest with Sumar, and even worse: it further weakens Sumar, to the extent that voters in the political space known as "the left of the PSOE" see how Yolanda Díaz's party does nothing but swallow frogs at each cabinet meeting, only to occasionally achieve isolated victories from the brink. In the polls, depending on who commissions them and their intentions, the Socialists more or less hold their own, but Sumar always comes out plummeting in voting intentions. And Sánchez knows he needs them to have a chance of returning to the presidency, as he wants, in 2027.
On the other hand, these more than ten billion euros in weapons (or that 2% of GDP: however you put it, it's still an outrage) also don't fit with Sánchez's actions as an anti-Trumpist European leader, capable of bold actions such as going to talk to the Chinese government in the midst of the tariff storm, at the risk of one of the Treasury thugs, Scott Bessent, being kind enough to tell Sánchez that this was like "cutting his own throat." The rearmament policy is assumed by the entire European Union, and Sánchez and the Spanish government are simply doing the homework imposed on them in Brussels. But in any case, it is pure Trumpism, a way of bowing down to the accusations that the American president often repeats in European countries of having been indolent and long-suffering. Without saying so explicitly, the almost always incomprehensible Ursula von der Leyen seems to accept these accusations, while Mark Rutte defends Europe's rearmament tooth and nail, to the point that he seems more like a lackey of Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio than a NATO secretary general.
This jump in the Spanish budget is, in short, a purgative for Sánchez and his interests. Nor is the promise that arms spending will not disrupt social spending credible: Rutte rejected days ago that investment in cybersecurity, terrorism, and border control could be counted as a percentage of GDP in the defense budget, and member states will be monitored to ensure that they comply with allocations designated for strictly military spending. Furthermore, no one has yet openly stated the purpose of this obscene amount of money spent on weapons and troops: what's the point of investing in weapons in a world already armed to be razed several times over, and in which the balance of power will always be unfavorable in Europe? In Spain, a Pedro smiles, whose surname is not Sánchez, but Morenés.
