Indra is Spain’s defense-and-IT Frankenstein: half systems integrator, half national champion, and now apparently a space company too. For years it’s been the go-to contractor when the Spanish state needs a radar network, an air traffic control system, or a flashy cybersecurity program that looks good in a PowerPoint. About 28% of it is owned by SEPI, the Spanish state holding company, which means its strategy is less about chasing markets and more about doing whatever Madrid thinks will keep Spain “strategically autonomous.”

Indra’s defense arm is where the money is. They’re a lead partner in the FCAS/NGWS sixth-gen fighter program alongside Airbus and Dassault, a geopolitical science project disguised as a fighter jet, and they’ve carved out roles in European defense IT, simulators, and surveillance systems. It’s not a prime contractor in the Lockheed sense, but it’s always at the table, usually with enough political backing to secure workshares.

The new twist is “Indra Space.” In 2025, Indra scooped up Hispasat and a big slice of Hisdesat from Redeia, folding Spain’s main commercial satellite operator and its military satcom cousin into the Indra machine. This was about Madrid deciding that satellites are defense infrastructure, not utilities. Now Indra can claim to be a vertically integrated “space systems” house: they design radars, manage military IT, and own the orbital pipes too. It’s a consolidation play dressed up as industrial strategy, giving Spain a champion to sit across the table from Airbus Defence & Space or Thales Alenia when EU space contracts are handed out.

The problem is scale. Indra isn’t Lockheed, it isn’t Airbus, and it isn’t even Thales. It’s a €4–5 billion company with a heavy domestic bias, trying to punch in the European heavyweight league. Absorbing Hispasat doesn’t make it competitive with SES or Eutelsat in satcom, and it won’t scare SpaceX, but it does make it the default Spanish prime for any program with the words “sovereign,” “secure,” or “strategic autonomy” attached.

So Indra today is best described as Spain’s defense-industrial filing cabinet. It has a drawer for radars, a drawer for fighters, a drawer for IT systems, and now a drawer for satellites. None of the drawers are overflowing, but together they form a company big enough to be unavoidable in Madrid and Brussels.

Whether Indra Space actually builds a competitive business or just hoovers up subsidies depends less on markets and more on politics.