Spanish and Indian PMs hold roadshow in Modi’s home state

India’s Narendra Modi and his Spanish counterpart Pedro Sanchez attended the opening of a new military aircraft plant in Vadodara, Gujarat, on Monday. Modi had been chief minister of the state before becoming the country’s prime minister.

The two dignitaries inaugurated an aircraft complex built by one of India’s largest conglomerates, Tata Group, in partnership with Airbus Spain. The factory will produce Airbus C-295 military transport aircraft, making it the first large-scale private project in the defense sector, which has so far been dominated by state-owned companies.

Sanchez was welcomed in Vadodara with a massive, flowery parade that saw thousands of people waving as the carriage transported him and Modi across the city from the airport to the factory site where the opening ceremony is scheduled to take place. It marked the first visit by a Spanish prime minister to India in 18 years. Modi visited Spain in 2017 and held talks with Sanchez at the G20 summits in 2018 and 2021, according to New Delhi.

While Madrid seeks to boost its trade with the world’s fifth-largest economy and most populous nation, New Delhi aims to ramp up its defense manufacturing capabilities to serve its domestic needs and increase defense exports to third countries. 

Sanchez said the partnership between Airbus and Tata would contribute to the progress of India’s aerospace industry and drive technological development, helping create a new generation of highly qualified technicians and engineers.

The Spanish prime minister will travel to Mumbai to meet with industry leaders, think tanks, and representatives from the tourism and film industries, as his country seeks to advance engagement with the South Asian nation. Spain is India’s sixth-largest trade partner in the European Union, according to the Economic Times, which cites government data. Bilateral trade in 2023 stood at $8.25 billion, with India’s exports to Spain amounting to $6.3 billion.

India’s Ministry of Defense has approved a $2.5 billion deal for 56 C-295 aircraft procured from Airbus Defense and Space back in 2021. They will replace the Indian Air Force’s legacy fleet of Avro HS-748 aircraft, which are used for carrying cargo and troops. According to the contract, 16 aircraft will be assembled in Seville, Spain—with the first deliveries made last year—and the remaining 40 will be built in India by Tata Advanced Systems (TASL), a defense arm of the Tata conglomerate. The first India-built aircraft is expected to be delivered in September 2026. 

This will be the first time the private sector will have manufactured a military aircraft in India, breaking the virtual monopoly of the state-run defense company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), which builds, maintains, and overhauls most of the Indian military aircraft in service, including Russian-made Sukhoi and MIG jets.

“We expanded private sector participation in defense manufacturing and made public sector units more efficient,” Modi noted while addressing the event. Asserting that India’s defense manufacturing ecosystem was reaching new heights today, he stated that a decade ago, the priority and identity of defense manufacturing were centered around imports, and no one could have imagined that such manufacturing could take place on such a large scale in the country.