Between the end of the Great Recession and the start of the COVID-19 crisis: The Armed Forces, the State, and civil society in Spain (2019-2021)

Résumé

The COVID-19 crisis broke out in Spain when the effects of the Great Recession that began in2008 had not completely passed, so that from 2020 two crises overlapped: the end of the GreatRecession and the beginning of the COVID-19. Naturally, both affected security and defensepolicy and, by extension, civil-military relations in Spain. We have already analyzed the first inseveral previous studies in which the effects of the Great Recession in our country and theArmed Forces have been analyzed until 2018, while the second is the main contribution of thispaper. Apart from this, we will also examine other relevant issues of recent years (2019-2021),such as, for example, the persistence of Neo-Praetorianism that began in 2006 and lasts until2021, the first National Defense Directive of President Sánchez (2018-) , the new organization ofthe Armed Forces, the manipulation of the demands of the military by the extreme right andother classic topics in this kind of research (military spending, material policy, personnel policy,international missions, etc.).