For the Spanish socialist leader, nothing is more important than his personal interests: neither the security of Spain nor the security of Europe.<\/p>\n
A government weakened by corruption and dependent on far-left parties<\/big><\/p>\n Pedro S\u00e1nchez is cornered by corruption scandals<\/a> affecting his personal entourage (his wife and brother), his attorney general, and the last two general secretaries of his party, the PSOE. Under these conditions, his government is politically very weak and depends more than ever on its communist partners<\/strong> (Sumar and Podemos) and separatist<\/strong> (Junts, ERC, Bildu, PNV, and BNG). Of the latter, ERC, Bildu, and the BNG are far-left parties as hostile to NATO as Sumar and Podemos.<\/p>\n The NATO summit being held this week in The Hague is expected to agree on a common target of 5% of GDP for defense and security investment. S\u00e1nchez is already having an extremely difficult time convincing his far-left partners to support the current commitment of 2% of GDP. The Spanish socialist leader knows that he won't have the support of communists and separatists<\/strong> to raise that investment to 5%, and that now, with his allies interested in distancing themselves from a government riddled with corruption, this could serve as an excuse for the far left to bring down S\u00e1nchez's government<\/strong> and attract the most radical voters of the Socialist Party.<\/p>\n S\u00e1nchez puts his alliance with pro-Russian parties above Spain's security<\/big><\/p>\n With such a weak government, a responsible leader would put the security of his country and Europe before his personal interests<\/strong> and would call elections so that a government with more solid support can face these challenges. S\u00e1nchez does the opposite: he puts his personal interests before the security of Spain and Europe<\/strong>, and he does so in order not to lose the support of the parties that most favor Russia's interests in Spain: let us remember that Izquierda Unida (today Sumar) and Podemos were the most pro-Russian Spanish parties in the previous European legislature<\/a>, and today they continue to display their rhetoric against NATO: yesterday Podemos demanded that S\u00e1nchez leave the Atlantic Alliance<\/a>.<\/p>\n This situation explains the letter S\u00e1nchez sent to NATO on Thursday rejecting the 5% target<\/a>, despite acknowledging that Vladimir Putin's Russia is an \"existential threat.\" Ultimately, the only real concern motivating this letter is S\u00e1nchez's desire to stay in power at any price, even by breaking NATO's unity<\/strong> precisely at a time when the allies should show greater cohesion and solidarity in the face of this common threat, against which the European countries bordering Russia are already investing a considerable portion of their GDP in defense<\/strong>.<\/p>\n S\u00e1nchez announces that NATO will exempt Spain from the 5% objective<\/big><\/p>\n As if that letter weren't enough, yesterday S\u00e1nchez made an announcement stating that he had reached a \"historic agreement\" with NATO<\/a> that exempted Spain from reaching that 5% target<\/strong>. S\u00e1nchez stated that our country would only have to reach 2.1%. Obviously, this is displaying a privilege that is openly unfair to others<\/strong>, and if such an agreement existed, it would threaten to thwart the common goal of 5% and put NATO unity at risk<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Foreign media indicate that S\u00e1nchez's announcement is a lie<\/big><\/p>\n Following S\u00e1nchez's announcement, several media outlets have denied this alleged agreement. Politico.com has noted: \"Spain threw up a last-minute roadblock to the new spending target, but gave way after being granted flexibility.\"<\/em> This media outlet adds:<\/p>\n In order to bring Madrid on board, the new language that leaders will approve on Wednesday was changed from \"we commit\" to \"allies commit\" to spend 5 percent on defense, a NATO official said. That would allow Spain spending flexibility as long as it meets NATO's updated capability targets<\/strong> approved by alliance defense ministers on June 5.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Likewise, France24 noted: \"Multiple diplomats at NATO said the agreement had gone through with the approval of all 32 nations and that there was no exemption for Madrid.<\/strong>\"<\/em> This French media outlet notes that the letter sent by S\u00e1nchez to NATO on Thursday \"sparked fury from other NATO members who feared it could derail the carefully crafted compromise.<\/strong>.\"<\/em> Likewise, from the United Kingdom, Sky News has noted that \"Spain remains a potential problem for alliance unity though<\/strong>\"<\/em>, adding that \"Spain allocated a mere 1.24% of its GDP to defence last year - and is one of the lowest defence spenders in the alliance as a ratio of GDP.\"<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cThe target remains 5% of GDP\u201d<\/big><\/p>\n Furthermore, El Mundo has pointed out: \"The North Atlantic Treaty Organization itself maintains that, in reality, the target remains 5% of GDP<\/strong>. That Spain will indeed have to increase spending to that level to meet all the capacities required of it, while the Government maintains that 2.1% will be sufficient<\/strong>\".<\/em><\/p>\n This Spanish newspaper adds: \"In a position of extreme weakness after an alleged corruption plot was uncovered within the PSOE and the Government, the head of the Executive decided on this confrontation to, first, divert attention from this crisis<\/strong>, and, second, to prevent his partners, very upset by the 'Cerd\u00e1n report', from having a new reason to end the legislature.\"<\/em><\/p>\n A letter from the NATO Secretary General refutes S\u00e1nchez's announcement<\/big><\/p>\n To further fuel the controversy, yesterday S\u00e1nchez published a letter sent to him by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte<\/a>, in an attempt to prove the alleged agreement signed with the Alliance. However, the second paragraph of the letter denies the agreement announced by S\u00e1nchez:<\/strong><\/p>\n \"In light of your letter, I can hereby confirm that the agreement at the upcoming NATO Summit will give Spain the flexibility to determine its own sovereign path for reaching the Capability Target goal<\/strong> and the annual resources necessary as a share of GDP, and to submit its own annual plans.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This does not mean that Spain is exempt from the common 5% target<\/strong>, but rather that it will be able to choose the steps necessary to reach that goal. The letter demonstrates that S\u00e1nchez lied yesterday when he said he had agreed to a 2.1% target<\/strong>, a figure not mentioned in Rutte's letter. Obviously, S\u00e1nchez's lie is an attempt to force NATO to play along with the socialist leader, under threat of straining the Alliance<\/strong> if the other member countries reject the Spanish president's unsupportive attitude. Once again, and just as he is doing with the huge purchases of Russian gas by Spain<\/a> while prohibiting its extraction on Spanish territory, S\u00e1nchez is doing Putin a great favor<\/strong>. One day we will know if he does it by mere coincidence or for something more.<\/p>\n ---<\/p>\n Photo: Europa Press. Pedro S\u00e1nchez with then-Podemos ministers Irene Montero and Ione Belarra at a public event held on July 6, 2022, in Madrid.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the Spanish socialist leader, nothing is more important than his personal interests: neither the security of Spain nor the security of Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19536,10398],"tags":[9570,11368,693,2721,7841,10731,11462,16942],"class_list":["post-60001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-we-said-yesterday","category-spain","tag-mark-rutte","tag-nato","tag-psoe","tag-pedro-sanchez-castejon","tag-podemos","tag-russia","tag-spain","tag-sumar"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-15 04:45:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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