Spain

Spain's Military Spending Nears 2.13% of GDP as Public Debt Sits Below 100%

Spain, grouped here within the Europe region, shows a government debt load just under the size of its own economy and a military budget equivalent to just over two percent of GDP under SIPRI's series, per the figures assembled for this briefing.

Economy and Fiscal Position Spain's economy was valued at $1.73 trillion in 2024, per World Bank WDI figures, with GDP per capita of $35,327 and a population of 48.85 million. The IMF's 2026 World Economic Outlook puts government debt at 98.2 percent of GDP — just under the full-GDP threshold. Foreign exchange reserves were $89.1 billion in 2025, per IMF IFS figures.

Defense Spending and Capability SIPRI's 2025 figures put Spanish military expenditure at $40.2 billion, or 2.129 percent of GDP under SIPRI's own GDP series; that ratio should not be recomputed against the World Bank GDP figure above, since SIPRI uses its own denominator. Active personnel numbered 124,000 as of 2022, per COW NMC — a small share of the 48.85 million population recorded above for 2024 — and the same source gives Spain a CINC score of 0.0066038175 for that year, a composite measure the COW project derives from demographic, industrial and military inputs rather than spending alone. This dataset contains no nuclear-warhead figure for Spain.

Governance V-Dem's 2025 figures put Spain's electoral democracy index at 0.822 and liberal democracy index at 0.741, both on a 0-1 scale. State capacity is scored at 0.947, the highest of the three governance measures recorded here.

Energy Primary energy consumption was 5.8473 exajoules in 2024, per Our World in Data, and electricity generation reached 287.89 TWh in 2025. Oil and gas production figures are dated to 2016 — 1.655 TWh of oil and 0.61 TWh of gas — and do not reflect current output. The gap between those decade-old production figures and the far larger, more recent consumption and generation figures above is a function of the age of the data, not necessarily of present-day output.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, IMF IFS, SIPRI Milex, COW NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy)