Spain’s Secret Cold War Nuclear Ambitions: Franco’s Plan to Deter Morocco

The emancipation of Morocco and the Ifni War that followed served as catalysts for this controversial project. Franco, fearing for Spain’s territorial integrity, particularly Ceuta, Melilla, the Canary Islands and the Sahara, saw in the nuclear weapon a means of deterrence and to strengthen the country’s geopolitical position.

While France did not directly oppose the idea of a European nuclear program, the United States, on the other hand, was fiercely opposed to it. Their pressure, in addition to economic constraints and internal political developments, ultimately led to the demise of the Islero Project.

The death of Franco in 1975 and the advent of democracy sounded the death knell of the project. Although Adolfo Suárez, the first president of the democratic transition, considered reviving it, Spain’s accession to the European Economic Community in 1986 definitively buried the idea of a Spanish atomic bomb.