Almost half of Spaniards (47.3%) are in favor of Spain increasing defense spending to “be prepared for future threats” as the Government has promised before the ukrainian warbut another 46.6% are committed to not raising it or even prefer to lower it.
This is confirmed by a barometer of the Sociological Research Center (CIS) on “current issues” prepared from 2,420 interviews conducted between March 25 and 31 and released this Friday by the public demographic institute. Faced with those who do consider increasing military spending, 34.4% think that it should not be done, and there is 12.2% who ask to lower them. In addition, 61% advocate for the European Union to have its own army and 32.1% do not see it as appropriate.
Spain currently invests just over 1% of its GDP in Defense, so reaching the 2% committed to NATO would require almost double military spending, to reach 20,000 million euros. This commitment caused division between the government partners of PSOE and United We Can, which defends the need to prioritize the use of public resources in other matters.
Majority support of PP, Vox and Cs voters
The CIS survey reveals that the increase in defense spending has majority support among PP voters (76.4% of his voters), of vox (81.7%) and of citizens (73.2%), while among those of PSOE there is division of opinions since 43% support it and 41.1% prefer to leave it as it is, while 9% prefer to reduce them.
Among those who voted for United We Can only 16% adhere to the increase in military spending compared to a majority of 53.5% who reject it, with 27.2% who advocate reducing it.
The survey also surveys the opinion of the Spaniards on the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, an offensive in which 87% of those surveyed think that the Russian Army is committing war crimes and against humanity and by which 83.9% understand that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin must be brought to the International Criminal Court to stand trial for war crimes.
The Government approves of its action before the invasion of Ukraine
Regarding the role that different governments have played in the face of the invasion, and on a scale of 1 to 10, Spaniards give Sánchez’s Executive a score of 5.02which places him in fifth position in a table headed by the Government of Ukraine (7.06 points), followed by France (5.95) and the European Union (5.46); just below Spain is the US government (4.97 points). The lowest grade is the one obtained by the Putin Government (1.57).
Another question reveals that citizens positively evaluate the welcome that Spain is providing to refugees from Ukrainewith an overwhelming percentage of 89.9% rating it “very” or “fairly” positively.
This CIS barometer also shows the concern about the unleashing of a nuclear war derived from the invasion of Ukraine, so that half of those interviewed (50.3%) affirm that there is a risk of it happening compared to 41.5% who do not see it that way.
And if a large majority is convinced that the Russian army is committing war crimes, 39.5% also point out that it is using prohibited weapons of mass destruction by the international community; 25.2% think that they are not doing it and 34.7% acknowledge that they do not know.
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