The Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, is independent and, as she always says, she is a legal professional, which leads her to be a free spirit and say what she thinks, something that is not always common in Spanish politics. In her speech yesterday at Foros de Vanguardia, she made a defense – quite literally – of the investments in her ministry and recalled that when she arrived eight years ago the expenditure was 8 billion euros and last year she raised that figure to 33 billion. And for those who might think that this increase in spending is bad news for peace, Robles made her radical opinion clear on the matter: “Investing in defense is investing in peace, it is investing in freedom, it is investing in security, it is investing in jobs.” Following this argument, she lamented that Spain is very behind compared to other neighboring European countries in creating its own defense industry.
Anyone who listened to her might think that the minister was a fervent guerrilla friend of armed conflicts. But her approach is quite the opposite: to equip oneself with defense power to ensure peace. In this sense, at the end of the talk, Sister Lucía Caram intervened, who has launched multiple aid campaigns for groups affected by wars, to remind that Pope Francis knew Robles and held her up as an example of a defender of the cause of peace. The previous pontiff told her that he found it surprising that he was facing a Minister of Defense who “always makes me think of peace.”
In her line of sincerity, Robles lamented that “the EU is failing in Ukraine” and that it should help Volodymyr Zelensky’s government more. “Let us not forget Ukraine,” the minister said several times, who has precisely supported an initiative by Sister Lucía Caram to send a caravan of 30 vehicles with medical supplies and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, which will leave Barcelona blessed by none other than Pope Leo XIV during his visit to the Sagrada Família on June 10.
Robles has opened the door of her ministry wide to Sister Lucía Caram to help her in her campaigns. And Robles has never been a conventional minister.
