The Armed Forces’ Role in Civil Protection and Public Opinion: A Research Note on the Evidence From Spain’s Emergency Military Unit

Does military involvement in domestic emergency response improve citizens' perception of the armed forces? This paper examines this question using Spain's Emergency Military Unit (UME) as a case study. By combining provincial-level information on cumulative UME interventions with public opinion survey data from the Center for Sociological Research, I compare individuals with varying degrees of exposure to UME interventions, both across provinces and over time, taking into account the nonrandom distribution of interventions. I find robust evidence of a positive effect of exposure to UME interventions on perception of the Spanish armed forces. Preliminary research exploring media coverage and news exposure as key underlying mechanisms is also presented.