The Armed Forces and Society in Spain (2015-2016): Caretaker armed forces?

Zusammenfassung

For the first time in its recent history living in democracy (since 1975) Spain has been under acaretaker government for slightly over ten months (from December 2015 until October 2016).Therefore, as noted in the subtitle to this article, we could wonder, have the military forces beenin a caretaker role too? To try to answer this question we will focus on the main areas of thesecurity and defense policy developed during the 2011-2015 term, which have their continuityduring this strange and brief term [see Carlos Navajas Zubeldia, “¿Avances? La política deseguridad y defensa de Rajoy (2011-2015) [Advances? Rajoy's security and defense policy]”,Revista de Estudios en Seguridad Internacional, Vol. 2, No. 2 (2016), pp. 101-129]. Thus, we willanalyze, among other matters, the international missions of the Spanish Armed Forces, relationswith allies, material policy, relations with civil society, personnel policy, etc., all within theframework of the new model of Spanish Armed Forces established in the document El proceso detransformación de las Fuerzas Armadas [The process of transformation of the Armed Forces] ofJanuary 2014. In the epilogue of the paper we will also study the first measures of the new defenseminister, the conservative Maria Dolores de Cospedal, who in November 2016 replaced the alsoconservative Pedro Morenés, who until then held this department since 2011. From amethodological point of view, I would like to stress that I am a specialist in Contemporary History.As a consequence of this, I will use this methodology, but in the context of the field of the ArmedForces and Society