The recent power outage that affected Spain and Portugal has sparked concern in Brussels—not only due to its impact on the energy sector, but also because of the possibility that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez exploiting the incident to expand NATO’s definition of “defense” and thereby justify the use of European funds for areas not strictly military, according to El Mundo.
Unnamed diplomatic sources from a Northern European country noted, “I can imagine Spain using it as an argument” at the upcoming NATO summit in June in The Hague.
At the last EU leaders’ summit, Sánchez had already tried to insert terms like “cybersecurity” and “green transition” into the defense agenda, seeking to have these concepts counted toward military spending. However, the European Commission quickly ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the blackout, and experts pointed to Spain’s energy mix as the likely culprit. Nevertheless, Sánchez refused to rule out any hypotheses in his public remarks, maintaining ambiguity over the origin of the outage.
This strategy is not new. In March, Sánchez proposed at the European Council that the EU’s rearmament plan—estimated to cost over €800 billion—be funded through common resources and that the concept of defense be redefined to include areas such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, counterterrorism, and cooperation.
Moreover, the Spanish government announced a €10.47 billion increase in defense spending to reach 2% of GDP this year, four years ahead of the NATO deadline. This increase, according to the government, will be funded through a redirection of Next Generation EU funds, state savings, and budgetary allocations from 2023, without raising taxes or impacting the welfare state. Whether true or not, national debt continues to rise, and the socialists are desperately seeking financing. By the end of 2024, Spain’s public debt stood at €1.622 trillion—101.8% of its GDP.
However, this decision has triggered tensions within the coalition government. Sánchez’s partners in Sumar, led by Yolanda Díaz, have voiced opposition to the increase in military spending, calling it unconsulted and contrary to a progressive foreign policy. The situation worsened when it was revealed that the ministry of the interior had signed a contract with an Israeli company to purchase bullets—contradicting previous commitments to cancel such deals and drawing criticism from allies like IU, Podemos, and BNG.
In this context, European partners are watching the Spanish government’s maneuvers with skepticism, suspecting that it is trying to plug domestic holes with EU money—presenting as “security investments” what are in fact expenditures in unrelated areas. The European Commission has asked Spain to deliver a report on the causes of the blackout within three months, and a panel of experts will be set up to assess the severity of the incident.