🪖 This Week in Spain: Defense Needs a Raise

Also: Spain's birthrate rises, police bust the Russian mafia and Meghan Markle vs. a town in Mallorca.

February 20, 2025 | Madrid | Issue #90

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🥜 This Week in a Nutshell: We’re The Bubble now! But you already knew that so let’s talk about something equally boring… defense spending! The government says it’s committed to reaching 2% of military spending by 2029 (or even sooner) but it looks like its parliamentary partners (and opposition) won’t make it easy.

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Do we have an army?

Spanish bombs, yo te quiero infinito

Ah, defense spending. Now that’s a subject that gets the heart pumping. And yet, now, here in Spain, maybe it should. Because where Trump used to whine about how Europe wasn’t paying its fair share (the goal set by NATO back in 2006 was 2% of annual GDP) and should spend more, now he’s saying Europe should up that to 3% or even 5% a year, and suggesting he couldn’t care less about Ukraine and might not come to Europe’s aid if Russia invades, say, Poland. So why is this especially bad for Spain?

• More 💣💲 please. When asked about NATO’s defense spending at the time of his inauguration, Trump said Spain’s defense expenditures were “very low”. This is true—and not a place where you want to be noticed. Spain has woefully failed to meet the NATO target of 2% of GDP. (We bring up the NATO rear with 1.28%.)

• The Dutchman agrees. The Netherlands’ old liberal PM Mark Rutte was in Madrid a few weeks ago in his new role as NATO head, to remind Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of the 2% (or maybe 3% or 5%). Sánchez tried to slow-walk the issue with Rutte, saying that Spain would definitely get to 2%…in 2029. You know, one tall handsome man to another…

• But now the painted man is angry. Sánchez’s slow walk looks bad in hindsight. If Spain has any hope of avoiding Trump’s wrath when the Orange Man next throws a defense tantrum, then it’s going to have to open the wallet for bombs and stuff.

Which brings us to Spain’s own defense #spendingapalooza.

Getting Spain’s political parties to agree on increasing defense spending will be worse than herding cats, as each has its own agenda and none want to be seen as compromising.

• Pedro’s people. The center-left government, led by the Socialists, is now arguing that the bigger military budget is essential for security. Spokesman Paxti López said this week that for years Spain knew that the U.S. would come to save us if we were threatened, but now… we don’t know. It’s Europe’s time to decide.

• Little raise. The government has already dropped €400m to boost military salaries as part of this shift. These allocations for military spending, decided in cabinet meetings, are usually approved without public announcements since they do not require parliamentary approval. But this one? Just announced.

Push back from Sumar and lefties. Avoiding parliamentary debate helps Sánchez dodge clashing with his coalition allies, who mostly are staunchly anti-militarist and openly critical of any increase in defense spending. But, he has said, it’s time for EU states and institutions to discuss how to finance this increased spending need.

The hard part? Getting his PSOE’s supporters in Parliament to agree.

• Mixed messages. Sumar has expressed reservations and refused to commit to supporting an increase. Social Rights Minister Pablo Bustinduy has even called the idea “outrageous”. But the party has also softened its stance in the last few days and now party spokesperson Verónica Barbero says it’s about prioritizing efficiency over spending. Huh.

• What about far-left Podemos? Not gonna happen. They have said they will oppose any initiative that contributes to a military escalation in Ukraine, especially if it involves “an increase in spending” and, consequently, “cuts in social areas such as education, healthcare, or pensions”.

• And the separatists? Basque EH Bildu says if the PSOE wants to increase spending, “they will have to vote with PP” (so that’s a no). Catalan leftish separatists ERC, historically opposed, now say that they hope “Europe will stand up to Trump” and ensure greater efficiency in spending. (So that’s not a no).

What about the right? Well, here things get interesting because Sánchez may indeed have to team up with the PP to get this through.

• PP support. The PP supports increasing defense spending to at least 2% of GDP, so party boss Alberto Núñez Feijóo backs the military budget increase. He told El Mundo that failing to do so would mean that Spain “lacks credibility in foreign policy and defense”.

• Vox a maybe. Far-right Vox also said they supported increasing defense spending “as much as necessary,” but haven’t clarified whether they’d support an initiative led by Sánchez.

Bring on that sweet, sweet EU cash 💰. No matter what the PP and PSOE agree (or not) to spend, it’s clear they’d rather it be somebody else’s money. The Sánchez government has been pushing in Brussels for a massive expansion of the EU budget through joint borrowing—like the EU did to cover COVID’s outsized impact in Southern Europe. In fact, they want to use joint borrowing to jack the budget from €1.2tn to over €2tn.

• With or without a brain? Joint EU borrowing to spend on defense is a ‘no-brainer,’ Spain’s finance minister Carlos Cuerpo told Politico. But (surprise!) the “frugal” folks up north aren’t too excited about that. “More common debt is not the way forward,” Dutch Finance Minister Eelco Heinen said; he has this weird idea that increased defense spending should be paid for with politically unpopular budget cuts “because the money is not free.” What a party pooper.

Magic trick 🎩🪄. Well, if Spain can’t get some sweet Brussels bucks, there’s always sleight of hand. Remember the €400m used to give military personnel a raise we mentioned above? That would add a whopping 0.025% of GDP to the defense budget, raising it to…1.305%.

Guess you gotta start somewhere, right?

More news below. 👇👇

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💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties this week

1. 👶 Spain has a little baby boomlet. Well, sorta

We borrowed this graphic from 20minutos because it’s perfect.

The number of babies born in Spain grew in 2024 for the first time in 10 years. Now, before we get too excited, let us explain: the number fell for nine years straight, in a row, one after the other, before rising last year, by 0.4%. But hey, it’s something, right?

• Just the facts. The number of babies born in Spain fell from 427,595 in 2014 to 320,656 in 2023 before spiking to 322,034 last year. (All stats from Spain’s INE stats bureau.)

• Context. Between 2014 and 2024, Spain’s overall population grew from 46.5m to 49.1m, a 5.5% jump, while births fell by 24.7%, which is…not a good comparison. So, maybe hold off building new kindergartens?

The whys. You don’t need us to tell you (though we have) that Spain has a major housing crisis, and that because of high prices and low wages more Spanish young people are leaving home later (which is not good for babies!). There’s even a national poll!

• The national poll. State pollster CIS, which appears to put its thumb on the scale for PM Sánchez but is generally reliable on other issues, published a study in September that found that 77.3% of Spaniards said they had few children "due to a lack of financial means.”

• Older moms. Some 26.4% of the respondents told the CIS that they had few kids “so as not to hinder their professional career.” And you can see this desire to hold off for a career reflected in another stat from the INE: the percentage of births to women 40 and up grew from 7.2% in 2014 to 10.4% in 2024.

But the immigrants will save us. Albert Esteve, director of the Center for Demographic Studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, explains the (minor) rise as a “product of immigration”. He explains: “If fertility is falling but birth rates are rising, it means that the fertile population is increasing. And the only way to increase the fertile population is with immigration.”

• More in GDP than babies. Immigration’s effects have been more notable in GDP than population growth, however. In a story on immigration’s impact on Spain’s economy, the Guardian quotes JPMorgan economists: “2022 saw the highest net migration in 10 years, at close to three-quarters of a million individuals…Overall, Bank of Spain analysis suggests immigration contributed over 20% to the near 3% GDP per capita income growth during 2022-2024.”

Now…have some babies?

2. 🗣️ The Rock (aka Gibraltar) gonna talk Spanish—again!

There be Spanish in them thar hills. Photo by Michal Mrozek on Unsplash

There’s a place on the Iberian peninsula that wants to add Spanish to its language repertoire—and no, silly, it’s not Catalunya. Yes, you guessed right—or, well, you probably didn’t, you just saw the photo above—Gibraltar is going to begin teaching Spanish in its schools.

• Really ⁉️ Yes, really. While Gibraltar may be best known for its monkeys, big rock and referendums where it voted 98% to not become part of Spain (ed. note: “That’s almost Belarussian!”), its government now says it plans to teach Spanish in school.

• Bilingual. “The Gibraltar community has always been bilingual, but in recent years the use of Spanish has deteriorated and many young people, although they understand it, do not speak it,” Gibraltar education minister John Cortés told ABC. “We believe that being bilingual is extremely important.” (So do we!)

“Always been bilingual?” Yes, that’s pretty true. Not only did most people in Gibraltar speak Spanish, many couldn’t speak English. This apparently became clear at the end of WWII, when British soldiers came to evacuate residents and, well, they apparently couldn’t communicate.

• Prohibition didn’t work. After that, the authorities banned Spanish even during school recess, but it continued to sneak in through Spanish radio and television.

• But Franco did. Then in 1969, Franco closed la Verja (The Fence of Gibraltar) after Gibraltar passed a constitution reaffirming its sovereignty, which might have been good politics but backfired culturally. Says Cortés: “The closure of the Verja helped the U.K. to Britishise Gibraltar and the arrival of satellite broadcasting in the nineties was decisive since what entered homes from then on was English.”

So what’s changed? Time has passed and, to be honest, to speak nothing other than Gibraltar English isn’t exactly a plus. Again, Cortés: “After the closure of the Verja, the use of Spanish was prohibited, but that has now changed and it is no longer a taboo.”

• Not so fast. Linguists say they’re skeptical but, hey, it’s a great idea. It may take 20 years before they get there, but for now ¡Hola, amigos!

Language bonus. We didn’t mention Catalonia just as a joke. The region’s stats bureau reported this week that in 2023 there were 267,000 more Catalan speakers than 5 years before. The bad news (for Catalan speakers)? It’s the principal language for only 33% of the population, down about 3.5 points. Worse, it’s the principal tongue for less than 30% of teens. An idea to get them to use it? Tell them they can’t.

3. 🚨 What do Russian mafia and porn directors have in common?

They both got arrested in Spain. The Policía Nacional announced that they’d busted a Russian money-laundering ring and arrested 14, and in a totally separate case, had arrested porn director Ignacio Allende aka “Torbe” at Madrid’s Barajas airport on the charge of sexual assault, illegal detention and human trafficking. Big week for the po-po! So without further ado, here are the Arrests of the Week!

First, the Russians. The group basically offered a “truly multinational” one-stop money-laundering shop for organized criminals the world over, which laundered “several million” every month in offices in Madrid, Marbella and Málaga (though the locations changed regularly)—replete with soundproof cabinets so no one could hear their bill counters as they counted.

• Spanish police launched Operación Strongbox when they noticed well-known Russian mobsters with links across Europe regularly delivering and picking up cash.

• The clients. The mafia worked with some of the world’s most feared criminal gangs, including Serbian and Albanian cartels, the Mocro Maffia, Colombian cartels, the Armenian mafia, and clans from Ukraine and China.

• Their cut. They charged 2-3% for the money they moved. Doesn’t sound like that much, but when you’re moving several million a month…

• Their legit businesses. You’ve seen Breaking Bad, right? Because if you’re laundering, you need a legal business to launder your money through, just like Walter White’s A1A Car Wash. In the Russians’ case, they had big ideas. The first, in the province of Huelva, was to acquire land to build a hotel complex with other investors. Another business idea was to install photovoltaic cells in Cuba to provide energy to the island, for which the Cuban government would hand over large quantities of nickel and gold. Mobster’s gotta dream!

• Spanish connection? El Español reports that among the gang’s contacts were “well-known Spanish politicians”. Really? Then again, maybe the idea of corrupt public servants is not that far-fetched. One of the 14 arrested was a police officer in Ayamonte (Huelva) who helped the gang get ID papers.

Then, the porn director. The 55-year-old cineaste was arrested when he arrived on a flight back from Cuba (more Cuba?).

• Sounds unpleasant. Police sources told El Mundo that Torbe was reported a week ago by a young South American woman whom he allegedly brought from her country of origin. According to her testimony, he locked her in an apartment and abused her while he recorded the scene.

• Not the first time? A year and a half ago, a Madrid court sentenced Torbe to two years in prison and a €65,000 fine after he admitted to recording and distributing two sexual videos with two minors. Torbe has another sentence for corruption of minors from 2008, according to legal sources (there was a video that "went viral" in Spain). And in 2006, he was arrested for hiring a minor whom he recorded in his pornos. He got out of that by claiming that he had been scammed and didn’t know the woman was underage. 🧐

4.🐐 A Goat and a monkey on the loose turn Madrid into Jumanji

We all need to escape from the endless cycle of doomscrolling these days. Fortunately this week, an adorable dwarf goat (not the same as a baby goat) magically appeared on the windowsill of a building and a capuchin monkey needed to be rescued from a tree. Is this relevant news? No. But the fact that we were all following the story of the goat on social media and television is quite telling: we need a break from politics.

Let’s start with the goat. On Tuesday, firefighters in Madrid’s Villaverde district were called after area residents noticed that a goat had climbed on the windowsill of a building and was trapped on a ledge… on the fifth floor. And they worried it might, um, fall.

• How’d it get there? That’s a mystery (more on that below). The window’s shutter was down and no one answered the door to the apartment, so firefighters had to approach it via the next-door balcony. They used a spinal board to connect the balcony to the AC unit and lured the animal using carrots and water.

• The goat walked across the board to safety and was rescued. The goat is in custody at an animal center and appears to be in good health. Hurray!

Again, how the hell did it get there? No one knows, hence our Jumanji theory.

• Barren digs. The apartment where it was found has been empty for quite a while and neighbors have never seen the goat. So far, neither the police nor the firefighters have been able to figure out where it came from. The neighbor whose balcony was used to rescue the animal joked that it had “come from the sky”. Therefore, it’s Jumanji.

That wasn’t the only animal that needed rescuing this week. On Sunday, a man in Mejorada del Campo, a small town outside Madrid, called the authorities after noticing a white-faced capuchin monkey clinging to a tree in his backyard.

• The poor monkey was in bad condition and seemed to be malnourished. After trying to lure it with food (and failing) rescuers used nets and a drone to prevent it from climbing higher and eventually caught it.

• It is now under observation at the Safari Madrid rescue center where it can hopefully make a recovery. We don’t know where it came from, but usually these animals are victims of illegal wildlife trafficking (don’t do this, people).

• Friends? No friends. Experts told El Confidencial that they will try to integrate the monkey into a group of capuchins that already live at the rescue center, but “it may be difficult as many primates raised in captivity fail to recognize members of their own species”. Sad face.

5.🌴 Meghan Markle vs. Mallorca town

Stop the digital presses! Yes, the world is slow marching towards a global conflict in which we may end up being dominated by techbros and ChatGPT, but trust us, that’s all secondary to this.

• Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, is in hot water after allegedly violating the intellectual property of Porreres, a sleepy town in Mallorca.

• Markle’s recent rebranding of her lifestyle venture to “As Ever” has sparked controversy because of the brand’s logo, which looks (suspiciously) similar to the town’s historic coat of arms, which dates back to 1370.

• The logo for “As Ever” features a palm tree flanked by two hummingbirds, while the coat of arms of Porreres features a palm tree flanked by two swallows (or maybe they are pigeons? Historians are not sure).

Who wore it better? (Amazing composite by the Daily Mail, btw)

Are we witnessing the most blatant case of copyright infringement in the history of humanity? No. But the tabloids definitely make it sound like it is and we need the content. So… yes. Yes we are.

• Far and wide. The story has already been picked up by The Sun, GB News (see video above), the Daily Mail, Page Six… you know, the usual.

• The headlines describe the “furious Porreres Mayor” who is “considering legal action” against Markle, and it’s in ALL CAPS so it must be true.

But, but, but… However, when you read about it in the Spanish media, turns out that the Porreres mayor Xisca Mora, while surprised by the story, is actually pretty chill.

• Perverted? Yes, she did say she didn’t want the town’s coat of arms “to be perverted” (strong word) but also ruled out pursuing any sort of legal actions (mainly due to financial limitations… it’s a town of 5,000 people after all).

• Hello, Princess? However, she said she intended to reach out to Markle to let her know of the situation and maybe she’d change the design (we wish her the best of luck).

And hey, not all is lost because even if she doesn’t change the design, at least she could help promote the town’s renowned apricot jam, which is a local delicacy (we’ve tried it and it’s great). This could be a mutually beneficial opportunity, as she noticed that Markle’s website also promotes jams (or, as the Daily Mail said, Porreres mayor “uncovers ANOTHER uncanny coincidence between brand and Mallorca”).

Will Markle head over to Mallorca for a visit? Does she care? Do we? Probably not, but it’s certainly a fun discussion to have this weekend that doesn’t involve Ukraine.

You’re welcome.

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