Made up of Izquierda Unida (IU) and Podemos, two parties that share power with the majority Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), it indicated that it will reject the extension from four to six the number of US anti-missile destroyers in Rota, in the south of the country.
The president of the parliamentary group and leader of En Comú Podem, Jaume Asens, who has already spoken out against the measure, was joined on Monday United We Can, which advanced to vote against when the issue is discussed in Congress.
“We don’t like that pact, it means more military, more American destroyers and more dependency and submission to the United States,” Asens said last week.
In this sense, two heavyweights from Podemos and IU spoke, the ministers Ione Belarra (Social Rights and Agenda 2030) and Alberto Garzón (Consumer).
Belarra, who is the leader of Podemos, reiterated that the country’s urgencies do not include “doubling military spending.” She stressed that “Spain is not at war”, but rather in the process of protecting itself from the socioeconomic effects of the war in Ukraine.
Citizens do not need to buy bombs or combat aircraft at the request of a foreign power, he added, referring to the information transferred by the US president, Joe Biden, to the head of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, during the NATO Summit in Madrid.
For his part, Garzón, who is the federal coordinator of IU, remarked that increasing the number of North American destroyers at the Rota military base accentuates the differences within the government coalition.
Biden announced in Madrid the previous week that the United States is preparing to sell F-16 aircraft to Turkey, and stressed that “we are going to defend every inch of allied territory”, when assessing the agreement in principle to expand NATO with the income of Sweden and Finland.
In addition, he told Sánchez of the Pentagon’s intention to add two destroyers to the Rota base.
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