President Donald Trump criticized Spain for not agreeing to new defense spending targets adopted by NATO and suggested the country could face tariffs twice as high from the US.
Trump stated that the US is negotiating a trade deal with Spain and threatened to make them pay twice as much, which caused Spain's benchmark stock index to extend its losses.
Spanish officials dismissed Trump's tariff threat, emphasizing that the European Commission handles trade matters for the EU and that individual member states don't negotiate trade deals on their own.
I’m afraid I must disagree on some points.
While official numbers give an unemployment of 10.9, we must remember that there is a large underground economy, so actual numbers may be in the 5-6% range, or less.
I agree on the bureaucracy, but I think its downscalable.
Taxes I agree. They are proportionately larger than in most of the EU, and services worse.
On the military, a hard disagree. I know several people in the military, and as in may countries, you have hawks, but most of the army is professional, and very, very neutral politically. The image of a politically active military is an old image, from the dictatorship, 50 years ago. Even then, when a coup was attempted, the majority of the armed forces shut it down. That image of the armed forces is mainly a discourse used by separatist regions for propaganda (not saying that propaganda isn’t used in non separatist regions, just different), and the hard left.
Remember that unemployment rate here counts only people inscribed in the unemployment services. I don’t think half of them are working illegally, at best that would be a rounding error.
Downsizing the bureaucracy would take many years, since public servants ‘cannot be fired’ (bit of an oversimplification, but the reality in practice), and would take some strong political will, which we lack in Spain.
And about the armed forces, I know some ex-military that are kinda left-leaning, but the average is absolutely right leaning (from straight up nazis, to ‘apoliticals’ that if you talk with them for a short while will let go some racist, homophobic, or generally reactionary comments very casually). And that’s the rank and file, if you go to the higher ups you’ll find, well, as many fascist as you can expect from a military that wasn’t purged or rehabilitated after a fascist regime.
Do you mean the coup that the king himself organized so he could stop it afterwards to come out as the hero that saved the day while also putting some fear in the population?? That coup d’état ‘attempt’??
They are actually below average
https://www.euronews.com/business/2025/05/16/personal-average-tax-rates-in-europe-which-countries-saw-the-biggest-rise-in-2024
Services, I guess that’s more a matter of opinion, but having lived in Germany, UK and the US, I think they’re OK
I don’t think that’s right. This other link (from another commenter in this thread), also euronews, says 47%. Anecdoticaly I get €1800 in my bank account every month, but cost my employer €3200.
Kinda tricky to compare taxes from one country to another.
Income tax is one thing, social security is another and the taxes your employer pays as business are another. You’re just conflating them all. Some countries have lower social security contributions but have no universal health insurance or you just have to pay out of pocket or it’s tied to your work, etc. It’s not apples to apples