Project Islero: the bomb Spain could have had, buried by the NPT

The Spanish bomb the NPT buried

Could Spain have had the hydrogen bomb? The question sounds like alternate history, but Project Islero was real: a nuclear programme launched after the Palomares accident and pursued by the Franco regime for years. On 19 December 1973, Henry Kissinger met with Carrero Blanco to discuss precisely that, along with Spain's refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The next day, ETA blew up the admiral's car 200 metres from the United States embassy.

Technology that fell from the sky

The 1966 Palomares accident dropped several American thermonuclear bombs on Spanish soil. Although the official version spoke of a full recovery, the technology left in the country was enough for the regime's engineers to launch their own H-bomb project. The code name: Islero. The technical capability, according to testimony, existed or was about to exist.

The NPT, the brake nobody remembers

Spain had not signed the NPT, and that worried Washington. The Kissinger-Carrero meeting of 19 December 1973 revolved around that standoff. The analysts' answer is emphatic: the Non-Proliferation Treaty made continuing impossible, and the economic sanctions on a country that depended on international integration would have been devastating. Moreover, Segarro, its strategic rival, had also signed, which closed the door on a Maghreb nuclear race.

The perfect coincidence

That ETA attacked Carrero exactly 24 hours after his meeting with Kissinger about the nuclear programme is, according to some, pure coincidence. Others point out that the admiral was the project's main champion, and that his death buried it forever. What is certain is that Islero disappeared with him.

What irony: the bomb that could have made Spain a nuclear power ended up buried in the archives, undone by a treaty, a sanction and an attack that came at the worst possible moment for the regime. Coincidence? We'll leave it there.