The Popular Assembly Valencia Against Wars organises:
'MILITARISM AND WAR ECONOMY'
By Juan Carlos Rois Alonso, lawyer, insubmissive and antimilitarist activist.
Thursday, 13 February 2025, at 7:00 p.m.
At the Ca Revolta cultural centre
Santa Teresa Street, 10
Velluters, València 46001
The total military expenditure of the Spanish state in recent years has reached an extraordinary magnitude. Truly scandalous. In 2024, a year in which the budget has been extended, it was much more than the official budget of the Ministry of Defence: 14,074 million euros. The actual amount actually spent on defence is, according to the General State Comptroller's Office itself, 16.15 billion euros. The increase in Ministry of Defence spending in 2023 and 2024 is historically unprecedented (more than 26%) and has placed it at 1.1% of gross domestic product (GDP). But when accounting for hidden items in other ministries (Finance, Foreign Affairs, Presidency, Industry, Interior...), extra-budgetary items and the public debt they generate, which are also military spending (even according to the criteria of international organisations such as SIPRI, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or NATO itself), the real figure results from multiplying that of the Ministry of Defence by more than three: 50.540 million euros, un 3,5% del PIB. This has led Juan Carlos Rois to describe the current government as "the most militaristic in history". The full 2024 report can be found on our website "Balance of defence policy in 2024".
Juan Carlos Rois, insubmissive, lawyer, defender of a large number of conscientious objectors and insubmissives during the years of the struggle for the recognition of the right to object to military service and the campaign of insubmission, is also a renowned researcher of militarism in Spain. In this conference he will reveal the real figures of the state's military expenditure, its composition and the concealment with which this data is handled by the governmental authorities. The reasons for the spectacular increase in military spending go far beyond the demands of NATO and the new Trump era. The Spanish military industrial complex is a major beneficiary of the current armed conflicts (56 currently active wars) and the global pre-war climate that is cleverly greased by the world's elites and their communicating bridges with the military industry.
Rois has been a member of the collective Utopía Contagiosa, which has published several books such as: «Nonviolent politics and social struggle. Nonviolent alternative to military defence». A new book has just been published: «Nonviolence as political action. Global Change in the Face of Militarism and Ruling Violence». In it, he defines what nonviolence is and justifies it as a powerful tool for citizens to change the world, which allows us to move towards the construction of a fairer, freer, more united and truly peaceful society.