How Spanish MEPs voted on arming Ukraine against Russia
Minutes of 19 September 2024: 425 MEPs in favour, 131 against, 63 abstentions. The Spanish breakdown, by hand.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
How Spanish MEPs voted on Russia
How did Spanish MEPs vote on the use of long-range Western weapons against Russian territory? The answer is in the European Parliament minutes of 19 September 2024: 425 votes in favour, 131 against and 63 abstentions. The problem is that the official record only publishes surnames, mixed by political group and without nationality. Identifying each Spanish MEP requires manually cross-referencing the minutes with the MEP search tool. A painstaking job that several readers did on their own.
The minutes the EU does not provide
The approved text is titled 'Continued financial and military support to Ukraine by EU member states'. The roll-call vote appears in the official minutes, but in a format that makes scrutiny difficult: surnames without full names, grouped by European political family and with nationalities mixed up. To find out what each Spaniard did, you have to open the MEP search tool, go one by one and compare. Transparency, they call it.
The final count was 425 votes in favour, 131 against and 63 abstentions. The majority passed with the support of conservatives, social democrats, liberals and greens. Against it voted, among others, the radical left and part of the far right. Abstention was the refuge of those who did not want to commit.
Who voted in favour, against and who hid in abstention
Among the Spaniards who voted in favour of the text are names from the PP, PSOE and Ciudadanos. The PSOE voted as a bloc in favour. The PP too. The Spanish liberals as well. In other words: the two parties that alternate in the Spanish government agreed on backing the use of long-range weaponry against Russia.
Against it voted Podemos, Sumar (with nuances), Bildu and BNG. Abstention was the territory of ERC and Vox. The six Vox MEPs abstained, which unsettled part of their electorate, who expected outright rejection. Alvise and the other two SALF MEPs voted against, a detail that his supporters highlighted with enthusiasm.
The breakdown nobody publishes
The full breakdown, name by name, is not offered by any institution. It has to be built. And that is exactly what several readers did: download the PDF, open the list of Spanish MEPs and cross-reference surnames one by one. The result is a list circulating on social media that includes everyone from veterans of Spanish politics to relatives of old glories. Coincidences of public life.
The list allows us to know, for example, that Leire Pajín earns 20,000 euros a month as an MEP, according to the calculation being shared. Or that there are those who voted in favour of attacking Russian territory and then present themselves as pacifists at home. Individual scrutiny is the only way to know who you are really voting for.
Why this vote matters
Russia has 7,000 nuclear warheads. Authorising the use of long-range Western weapons against its territory is, for some analysts, an escalation that is difficult to control. For others, it is the legitimate response to aggression. What cannot be disputed is that the vote took place and that Spanish citizens did not have that information in any party's election manifesto.
The European Parliament has no direct competence in military matters, as one reader recalled. But it votes on resolutions that set the EU's political line. And those votes do have consequences. Representative democracy, they say.
With this data, it would be logical for MEP scrutiny to be massive in every election. It remains a minority. Nobody fully explains why.
How did Spanish MEPs vote on the use of long-range Western weapons against Russian territory? The answer is in the European Parliament minutes of 19 September 2024: 425 votes in favour, 131 against and 63 abstentions. The problem is that the official record only publishes surnames, mixed by political group and without nationality. Identifying each Spanish MEP requires manually cross-referencing the minutes with the MEP search tool. A painstaking job that several readers did on their own.
The minutes the EU does not provide
The approved text is titled 'Continued financial and military support to Ukraine by EU member states'. The roll-call vote appears in the official minutes, but in a format that makes scrutiny difficult: surnames without full names, grouped by European political family and with nationalities mixed up. To find out what each Spaniard did, you have to open the MEP search tool, go one by one and compare. Transparency, they call it.
The final count was 425 votes in favour, 131 against and 63 abstentions. The majority passed with the support of conservatives, social democrats, liberals and greens. Against it voted, among others, the radical left and part of the far right. Abstention was the refuge of those who did not want to commit.
Who voted in favour, against and who hid in abstention
Among the Spaniards who voted in favour of the text are names from the PP, PSOE and Ciudadanos. The PSOE voted as a bloc in favour. The PP too. The Spanish liberals as well. In other words: the two parties that alternate in the Spanish government agreed on backing the use of long-range weaponry against Russia.
Against it voted Podemos, Sumar (with nuances), Bildu and BNG. Abstention was the territory of ERC and Vox. The six Vox MEPs abstained, which unsettled part of their electorate, who expected outright rejection. Alvise and the other two SALF MEPs voted against, a detail that his supporters highlighted with enthusiasm.
The breakdown nobody publishes
The full breakdown, name by name, is not offered by any institution. It has to be built. And that is exactly what several readers did: download the PDF, open the list of Spanish MEPs and cross-reference surnames one by one. The result is a list circulating on social media that includes everyone from veterans of Spanish politics to relatives of old glories. Coincidences of public life.
The list allows us to know, for example, that Leire Pajín earns 20,000 euros a month as an MEP, according to the calculation being shared. Or that there are those who voted in favour of attacking Russian territory and then present themselves as pacifists at home. Individual scrutiny is the only way to know who you are really voting for.
Why this vote matters
Russia has 7,000 nuclear warheads. Authorising the use of long-range Western weapons against its territory is, for some analysts, an escalation that is difficult to control. For others, it is the legitimate response to aggression. What cannot be disputed is that the vote took place and that Spanish citizens did not have that information in any party's election manifesto.
The European Parliament has no direct competence in military matters, as one reader recalled. But it votes on resolutions that set the EU's political line. And those votes do have consequences. Representative democracy, they say.
With this data, it would be logical for MEP scrutiny to be massive in every election. It remains a minority. Nobody fully explains why.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (103 replies).
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