The defense boom, and in particular the surge in public funding allocated to it, has provided a much-needed boost to the results of Indra, the Spanish defense company in which the State holds a 28% stake. Between January and December 2025, the company, chaired by Ángel Escribano, earned €436 million, a 57% increase compared to 2024, as reported by the company to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) on Wednesday afternoon. Regarding the potential acquisition of the Escribano Group—a deal that has generated controversy due to a possible conflict of interest—Indra's CEO, José Vicente de los Mozos, simply stated that it is still under review. With these profits in hand, Indra has expressed optimism regarding its 2026 revenue: it expects to reach €7 billion. In fact, it has set much more ambitious targets than those outlined in its 2024-2026 Strategic Plan. At that time, Indra projected revenues of €6 billion this year. "We are confident in increased defense spending in Europe and Spain," Escribano stated at a press conference this Wednesday, held remotely and without questions.

Indra aims to be the leading defense company in Spain. This ambition is also shared by the Spanish government, its largest shareholder through SEPI with 28% of the company's capital. However, the path is not smooth, at least not in recent weeks. The possibility that this leadership could be achieved through the acquisition of other companies—as is the case with the Escribano Group, co-founded by Indra's current president, Ángel Escribano, who still owns a stake in the company—has put the government on alert regarding its influence within the company and, consequently, its ability to control key decisions.

The most commercially successful platforms have increased their productions focused on elite military units and have normalized an aesthetic of order, strength, and discipline. One of the latest examples is the documentary series Pelayo: Beyond the Limit on Prime Video. The protagonist is Pelayo Gayol, a veteran inspector with the Spanish National Police's GEO special operations unit who joins real anti-drug trafficking missions in Colombia. We already met the character in another documentary series, GEO: Beyond the Limitwhere he trained and selected the Special Operations Group, pushing agents to their limits to transform them into superhumans. Pelayo fosters a testosterone-fueled emotional immersion in military discipline. He plunges us into a context of violence and tension while constructing a cheap, pseudo-intellectual discourse about his work.

"They'll make a man out of you in the army" was one of the most common phrases heard when mandatory military service was still in effect. For some people, spending time in a barracks for military training was a way to bring out a supposed virility. All of that is in the past, but the traumatic stories are still remembered: denigrating "rabbits"—new recruits—was a pastime of those of higher rank and veterans, some of whom were driven to these practices if they didn't want to become victims themselves. Following the success of the documentary They'll make you a manMireia Prats and Joan Torrents now showcase the work of eight months of research for a sequel to that piece. They'll Make You a Man: Silenced Deaths It delves into several cases of deaths under strange circumstances that occurred in military barracks, deaths that remain shrouded in doubt because they were never properly investigated. The production premieres this Tuesday on TV3 and on the 3Cat platform.

What would have happened today, in the midst of European and Spanish rearmament, if a workshop for repairing and adapting military vehicles had positioned itself as a candidate to reindustrialize the old Nissan factory in the Free Trade Zone? The project was put on the table in 2021But the Catalan government, then under the leadership of Pere Aragonès, quickly shelved the proposal. This was the official reason given for the failure of the Tess Defence consortium's proposal, which was backed by the Ministry of Industry. Headlines at the time reported that the Catalan government rejected this option, but, as ARA has learned, it was the Minister of Defense herself, Margarita Robles, who had already sealed the fate of that investment in the Zona Franca.

Donald Trump told Pedro Sánchez this Monday that the State was "doing a fantastic job" in increasing public spending on defense. Twenty-four hours later, the President of the United States completely changed his tone, stating that he is "very disappointed" with Spain for the little money it invests in this area.

In the midst of the debate on increased defense spending and just the day before Pedro Sánchez's appearance in Congress, the Lower House's Defense Committee warmed up with an analysis of military equipment exports from Spanish companies. According to a report prepared by the State Secretariat for Trade, Spain exported defense equipment worth €1.976 billion in the first half of 2024. This is 13% more than the same period last year, according to the head of this secretariat, Amparo López Senovilla, in an appearance on Tuesday. The main recipients were European Union (EU) countries with 61% of total exports (€1.212 billion), and the best-selling product was aircraft (€1.339 billion, almost 70% of the total).

Some thirty countries of the European Union and NATO met in Paris on Tuesday, convened by the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and represented by the chiefs of the defence staff, to outline the Franco-British proposal. to send a peace mission to Ukraine when there is a ceasefire. The idea is to deploy between 20,000 and 30,000 soldiers on the ground to ensure that Russia complies with the agreements. "The meeting is a first step on security guarantees," summed up the French Minister of Defense, Sébastien Lecornu. Macron went a little further: "It is time for Europe to make its full weight count."

The war in Ukraine is heading towards a ceasefire and a tense peace, or, thanks to Trump's complicity, towards a clear victory for Putin. Either way, Europe will need a major leap in its defence capacity. To discourage the potential aggressor and stabilise a cold war, or, worse, to fight the hot war in good conditions. Let us hope that we are sufficiently skilled to guarantee the first option.

It is one of the world's leading arms manufacturers and exporters. Spain occupies the seventh place in the world ranking: for a decade now it has been in the top ten of this list, alongside powers such as the United States, Russia, Germany, China and the United Kingdom, and therefore well above its economic potential. It is ahead of Israel, South Korea and Italy. Its main buyers are NATO countries, especially Germany and the United Kingdom, followed at a distance by France and Australia. In fifth place it has two controversial clients: Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Because of the war in Yemen, plagued by atrocities, Germany and Italy have stopped selling to the Saudis. Spain, on the other hand, has not. Since 2015, at least 233,000 people have died in the Yemen war (there are allegations of war crimes against all sides). The Turkish genocide against the Kurds has not put a brake on Spanish arms sales. After Venezuela, the Arab Emirates are the eighth client of the State: the violations of human rights have led Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands to deny them the sale of arms. Again, Spain has kept it.