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ABSTRACT

THE SPANISH VOLUNTEER MILITARY RESERVE: WARP AND RETROPROGRESSION Firstly, we find in this document an explanation about what the Spanish Volunteer Military Reserve is, a new concept of military service, the only active reserve in our country. How to become a Volunteer Reservist in Spain? According to our Constitution, article 30.1, any Spaniard has the right and the duty of defending Spain. So, a reservist could be any Spaniard called to be incorporated to our Armed Forces. There are different types of reservist but here we are going to talk about the voluntary one. This new concept was created in 2003, so there is no tradition like in Britain or the USA. You have to apply, following an official announcement in the BOE (Official State Bulletin) and you get points according to your studies, skills, languages, military acknowledge, etc. If you get more points than the rest of the competitors for a specific posting, you enter the Reserves. Then you have a period of basic training, in the authors case that took place at the Naval Military School in Marn (Pontevedra) and then the specific training in the Arsenal of La Carraca in San Fernando (Cdiz). If you succeed both training periods you become a Volunteer Reservist (VR), till that moment you were only an aspirant. At the present moment they are at about 5000 VRs. Then you are allowed to choose the periods to enter your posting. When you are in, you are considered military personnel, the same as any other professional. When you finish your period of activation you are a civilian again. Every year, the Ministry of Defence asks if they are willing to go on missions abroad; although the majority always answer in the affirmative, hardly anybody ever goes. It is considered that especially for CIMIC (Civil-military co-operation) they are the ideal type of personnel. Secondly, the concepts of Warp and Retroprogression, terms coined by Rof Carballo and Salvador Pniker respectively, and their relationship with the Volunteer Reserve is analysed. Besides this,

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an analysis is also made of the comparison between the answers given by the reservists and a survey to the Spanish society carried out for the CIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociolgicas). For that purpose ethnographic methods are used: observation and comparative methods, followed by personal interviews with the reservists. We find a comparison with the reserves of other countries. Anglo-Saxon countries have a great tradition, nothing compared to Spain. In countries like the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia or Germany more than 25% of the total of the armies are VRs. Training is almost equal to that of professionals. Training in our country takes 15 days for the basic period and one or two weeks for the specific one. After the training, every year there comes a period of activation of one or two weeks in most cases. Now due to the economic crisis in most of the cases this is non- existent, except, and not always, for sanitary personnel. In many countries you are even able to become a General. In Spain, till two years ago, the maximum rank was 2nd lieutenant. For example, in the USA there are more than 1,000,000 reservists and they are very much appreciated in the American society. Taking advantage of the quotation from British W. Churchill, about the Reservists, they are really considered twice the citizen. In the UK, we are going to talk about TA mainly. Ministry of Defence authorities want 36,000 members in 2020 and the disposition of being a full time Reserve Service. In the third and last block, we examine the trends in a near future. We can conclude that tendenciesin all Western countries- indicate an increasing number of Volunteer Reservist personnel in this decade. Generally speaking, current armies are still designed, in some way, as in the Cold War period. Now, the same amount of soldiers is not needed, not only because of the ending of the Cold War but also because todays soldiers tend to be more specialised. Technology- in all aspects- has become very important. So it is better to have, perhaps, 20% fewer soldiers but with full technological equipment. Apart from that now we are living through a big economic crisis, so the authorities are thinking of cutting expenses in everything. The defence sector is no different, so the tendencies are to have fewer professional soldiers and increase the number of Reservists, which is less expensive. As a final conclusion, we may say that, in Western countries, Reserves are orientated towards helping and supporting the active units of their armies and, above all, Volunteer Reservists are sought as specialists to be used in missions abroad. We can also conclude, according to Carlos G. de Escalada, that reservism modernizes. A flexible reserve force, mobilized and trained, greatly enhances the operational capacity of a nation and places value on the actions of the military in civil society, which feels involved in the common duty of defending the homeland and its interests abroad. Promoting voluntary reservism is one of the most innovative concepts of our days and means evolution and modernization in allied countries.

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