To the executive report on defense spending that Sánchez had prepared for the NATO summit, another item of €6,287 million was added at the last minute. The Council of Ministers approved it last Tuesday, just before the chief executive caught his flight to Ankara. This is a record credit transfer ordered by the Treasury to the Ministry of Defense—nearly double the largest one authorized so far this year. The briefing from the Council of Ministers limits itself to justifying this extraordinary injection by the need to provide “a response to a series of financing needs for various programs within the Ministry of Defense budget, especially in the investment chapter.”
In this manner, and despite the fact that the Government has been without an approved budget since 2023, Spain has tripled its defense spending since 2018, rising from €11.172 billion to €35.419 billion in 2026.
This 2026, the Government had already concentrated most of its new defense investments during the weeks leading up to the summit, adding another €8.450 billion to military spending during the month of June. All of this is without counting loans to companies or transfers to other departments involved in achieving the so-called Industrial and Technological Plan for Security and Defense.
