SPAIN has shaken off its reputation as a NATO laggard to increase its defence spending by half in the last year.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which tracks military spending worldwide, puts Spain’s 2025 spending at 2.1% of national output, a rise of 50% in a single year.
NATO estimates tell a similar story, having put Spain at 1.28% of national output in 2024, the lowest in the alliance.
But by August 2025 it stood at 2%, meaning roughly €2 in every €100 the economy produces is now spent on defence.
Most of the jump came from an industrial and technological plan for security and defence approved by the cabinet on April 22, 2025, which added €10.471 billion and took total spending on security and defence to €33.123 billion, according to a new analysis by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a London defence think tank.
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Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government said the surge has been paid for with redirected EU recovery funds, underspent budget lines and unused 2023 allocations.
Only 18.75% of the plan went on weapons and deterrence equipment, with a further 16.73% earmarked for dual civilian and military uses such as firefighting and rescue.
The European Parliament’s research service has said, however, that Spain reached 2% partly by reclassifying security spending.
Money for 2026 has kept arriving in instalments by cabinet transfer, including €6.29 billion on July 7, the opening day of the NATO summit in Ankara.
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However, whether this new high-powered defence spending commitment will be maintained by a new government remains to be seen.
With Spain voting in a general election on November 29, Alberto Nuñez Feijoo, leader of the main opposition People’s Party (PP) and potential next prime minister of Spain, has told Congress that a budget is ‘the first point of any defence plan.’
His party argues that commitments made through single cabinet transfers do not bind a successor government in the same way as defence programmes which run for a decade or more.
RUSI say the major programmes are signed multi-year contracts, with much of their funding advanced as loans, and that neither the PP nor junior partner Vox has any intention of reducing military spending.
While spending has climbed, Spain was also closing its defence market to Israel, with its first national arms embargo banning trade in defence and dual-use goods from September 25, 2025.
Congress validated the ban on October 8, and the defence ministry cancelled the €697 million SILAM rocket launcher programme and the €287 million Spike LR2 missile programme.
But implementation has been uneven, with the Centre Delas, a Barcelona-based peace research centre, estimating that almost €1.2 billion of Israeli-linked contracts remain in force and a December 2025 exception allowing Israeli components in four Airbus programmes.
RUSI said a renewed Sanchez government could tighten the embargo while a change of government could loosen it, with both the PP and Vox having voted against it.
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