Fernando González Urbaneja | Recent polls show that Spaniards’ appreciation of NATO has taken a decisive turn; whereas previously there was a high level of mistrust of a defensive and armed military organisation, with a rejection rate of close to 50 per cent, acceptance now stands at over 70 per cent. Rejection of the invasion is overwhelming, more than 90%, compared to an irrelevant and extravagant 1% who see it…
Fernando González Urbaneja | The European and US deployment to help Ukraine and stifle Putin’s Russia is not as rhetorical or irrelevant as some imagined a week ago. Putin’s unilateral and criminal war is being met with the patriotism of Ukrainians, determined to defend their country and their freedom, but also with the active revulsion of most of the community of nations. The debate in the United Nations Extraordinary Assembly…
According to data from the agricultural organization Asaja, Spain annually imports almost 30% of the corn it needs from Ukraine. “The Spanish agricultural sector will undoubtedly be one of the victims. Our imports of cereals and sunflower, as well as basic means of production such as manure and fertilizers, will be seriously affected, which will imply a new increase in production costs for the sector”, the association pointed out. In…
Spain, after being one of the last European countries to close its airspace to Russian airlines, will limit the sending of offensive weapons to Ukraine just to the agreement adopted by the European Union. It does not plan to increase the defence budget, as other EU governments will do in response to the Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory. This was announced on Monday by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, in an…
Last week there was already talk about the possibility of excluding some Russian banks from the SWIFT system, so the decision announced by Ursula Von der Leyen in the early hours of Sunday morning was not entirely unexpected. It is considered a “weapon of (economic) mass destruction”. The decision to exclude banks from the SWIFT system has never before been applied to a banking system as interconnected as the Russian…
Spain is not in a situation of lack of gas supply in the coming months, as it has scheduled the arrival of a total of 56 ships of liquefied natural gas (LNG) between February and March. It also continues to implement all possible preventive measures to contribute to the guarantee of energy supply, with the launch last week of four other extraordinary ‘slots’ – rights to unload LNG – as…