Spain's oldest armament factory, which is situated in Granada, is 700-years old, and is now doing overtime to produce munitions for Ukraine.

It is evident that Europe has been dragging its feet to step up armament production to match the needs of Ukraine, preferring to let the United States shoulder that responsibility but that is slowly changing.

It was on Monday that the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, announced a bilateral accord with Ukraine to hand over 1,130-million euros in military support, especially in air defence weapons. The Americans and the BBC consider that sum to be 1.13 billion, but let’s keep it sensible.

As a consequence, the El Fargue arsenal’s 287 worker are now working a 3-shift system to cover the demand. But don’t think that just because the factory is in Spain that it remains a Spanish company because in 2001 it was bought by General Dynamics before it was taken over by a Slovakian company, MSM Group in 2020.

The arsenal in Granada has not been informed officially yet, but it is convinced that some of that sum will be spent there. The workers union certainly hopes so, considering that the Government should have a preferencial criteria for Spanish arsenals.

Editorial comment: finally, the EU appears to have woken up to the fact that Russia is its problem and it is Europe that needs to have the arms to defend itself, instead of depending on the US.

(News/Noticias: City & Metropolitan Area, Granada, Andalucia – Photo: Granadahoy)