The Spain of General Francisco Franco wanted to get the atomic bomb.
And he was close to achieving it.
In the middle of the Cold War, when the world was experiencing an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the main powers had developed nuclear weapons, the Franco regime secretly developed a plan to produce the definitive weapon.
It was called the Island Project and lasted for several decades of scientific research that was not definitively abandoned until the 1980s.
In 2016, a book published by the main person responsible for the project confirmed what until then had only been rumors and shed light on a hitherto unknown episode.
This is the story of how Spain tried to get the atomic bomb.
And why he finally didn’t do it.
An isolated Spain
At the end of the Second World War (1945), Spain experienced severe international isolation.
General Franco’s regime was repudiated by European democracies for its authoritarian character and for the closeness it showed during the war with Hitler’s Germany and fascist Italy, which left it outside the United Nations and most international organizations.
But with the Cold War the panorama changed radically.
Franco’s total rejection of communism and the strategic location of the Iberian Peninsula led the United States to seek his friendship.
Washington wanted to secure the loyalty of the countries of Western Europe to counter Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe.
In 1959, the then US president Dwight D. Eisenhower made a historic visit to Madrid in which, in exchange for economic aid and his international rehabilitation, Franco agreed to the installation of US military bases on Spanish soilfacilities that would acquire great strategic importance within the framework of the rivalry with the Soviet Union.
In this context, the government approved the project to provide the country with an atomic deterrent arsenal.
How the Islero Project was created
On December 8, 1953, six years before embracing Franco in Madrid, Eisenhower gave his speech “Atoms for Peace” before the United Nations General Assembly, in which he advocated peaceful use and for the good of humanity. of atomic energy.
The United States government then launched a program that made it possible for foreign scientists to come to train at universities and research centers in that country.
After having developed the Manhattan Project and having dropped the two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the war, the United States had become the world reference in nuclear physics and engineering and many countries, starting by the USSR, they tried to follow in its wake.
Spain was one of the countries that wanted to benefit from the “Atoms for Peace” program.
The Spanish government had created in 1951 the Nuclear Energy Board (JEN)in charge of research and development of atomic energy, and the organization decided to send some of its most promising researchers to study in prestigious American centers.
Among them stood out Guillermo Velardea brilliant Spanish army engineer who completed his training at Pennsylvania State University and Argonne National Laboratory.
From there he went on to work at the company Atomics International, in California, where he collaborated in the development of a small nuclear reactor that would serve as a prototype for those planned to be built in Spain to produce electrical energy.
Velarde would be the father of the Spanish atomic bomb, the bomb that was not.
“Countries that have nuclear weapons are the group of countries that are respected internationally,” he declared in an interview years later, when he decided to tell the story of the Islero Project.
That conviction drove his efforts for Spain to join that small club.
In 1961, during a visit to Madrid, he asked José María Otero Navascuésalso a soldier and president of the Nuclear Energy Board, the possibility of Spain manufacturing nuclear weapons taking advantage of the knowledge and capacity acquired by its researchers.
According to Velarde’s own account, Otero thought it was a good idea, but he did not want to take that step without having the approval of the government.
A year later, Velarde received a letter from Otero informing him that his idea had been approved and his presence in Madrid was required to take charge of the technical direction of the project.
Otero had consulted with Captain General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, head of the High Staff of the Armed Forces and vice president of the government, and he had given the green light to the project.
Less than three months later, in February 1963, Velarde was in Madrid, ready to lead the attempt to manufacture the Spanish atomic bomb.
Natividad Carpintero, from the Institute of Nuclear Fusion that today bears Velarde’s name and who helped him in the documentation task that supports his book, told BBC Mundo: “”Muñoz Grandes realizes from the first moment the importance of Spain being able to have a deterrent arsenal like the main powers.”.
Muñoz Grandes was one of the most influential soldiers within the Franco regime.
Considered a “hero” for his role in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), he commanded the Blue Division, the force that Franco sent to fight alongside German troops on the Russian front during World War II.
According to Military History expert Roberto Muñoz Bolaños (no relation), “Muñoz Grandes represents a generation of deeply nationalist commanders who had as examples Charles I and Philip II, the kings of the time of the Spanish Empire.”
The general’s support would be key for the Islero Project to start.
In those years, in addition, the Franco leadership saw the Spanish territories in North Africa in danger from the newly created independent Kingdom of Morocco, in particular the province of Ifni, where Spanish troops had already been involved in clashes with local forces and The tension was increasing.
“Equipment with nuclear weapons was the way to avoid incidents against any enemy, but they always thought about Morocco”concludes Muñoz Bolaños.
A bull and a cheap bomb
Already in Madrid, Velarde begins to work.
He baptized the plan as Proyecto Islero, in memory of the brave bull that in 1947 ended the life of the legendary matador Manolete.
If Islero gored Manolete to death, Velarde senses that his project will “kill him badly.”
The scientist works in the shadows at the JEN facilities.
To avoid suspicion, he is ordered never to identify himself as a soldier and directs the investigation so that his colleagues never know what the other participants in the project are working on or its true purpose.
The matter is so delicate that Muñoz Grandes wants all the documents to be classified as “top secret”. But Velarde rejects the idea.
“If we put maximum secrecy in the papers, everyone will find out,” he told Spanish National Radio years later.
Velarde and Otero soon come to the conclusion that the only viable possibility is the manufacture of a plutonium bomb.
According to Professor Carpintero, “the enrichment of uranium then required very complex and expensive facilities, only within the reach of the main nuclear powers.”
On the other hand, working with uranium would have made it much more difficult to keep the project from the scrutiny of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The project is planned in nine stages, from the development of the calculation codes to determine the configuration and critical mass of the bombs, the conventional explosives necessary to detonate them, and the choice of a nuclear reactor capable of producing plutonium, among others. .
As Velarde described them, they were “years of feverish work.”
The Ulam-Teller method
When the theoretical part of the project for the manufacture of plutonium bombs had already been completed, an unexpected accident was going to take Velarde’s research further.
On January 17, 1966, a US Air Force B-52 bomber loaded with four thermonuclear bombs collides with the KC-130 tanker plane that supplies it with fuel in flight over the small town of Palomares, in the southeast. from Spain.
Seven American soldiers die and the four bombs carried by the B-52 fall into the void. Two of them collide with the ground, causing a plutonium leak, and the US army deploys its troops to Spanish bases in an immense operation.
Otero Navascués and Muñoz Grandes send Velarde and other JEN technicians to the affected area to examine the remains of the two bombs and collect samples for analysis.
On his tour of the contaminated area, Velarde notices that some of the stones on the ground show a blackened surface and great radioactivity.
When he asks an American officer why this is, he tells him that the bombs travel on planes surrounded by a polystyrene sponge to prevent them from colliding with each other, which caused the plutonium to become embedded in the rocks.
The explanation does not convince Velarde, who suspects that polystyrene actually plays a key role in a thermonuclear bomb and begins his own investigations to find out what it is.
Until he reaches the conclusion that the Palomares bombs are composed of a plutonium bomb, a vessel with deuterium-tritium and between these two elements polystyrene, which allows the deuterium-tritium to reach the density and temperature necessary for it to be produce its explosion.
Velarde has just discovered one of the best kept secrets of the United States Army, the so-called Ulam-Teller methodfundamental for the development of the thermonuclear bomb or H-bomb.
The Research by Stanislaw Ulam and Edward Teller allowed the United States to equip itself with this weapon, even more devastating than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then, only the USSR, France and China had managed to replicate that technology.
Thanks to Velarde’s discovery in Palomares, Spain became the other country with enough knowledge to develop thermonuclear bombs.
But I never would.
The role of France and the differences in the Spanish government
Since 1963, Spain was in negotiations with France to import a nuclear reactor to be located in Vandellós, in the Catalan province of Tarragona.
The Islero Project envisaged that the future Vandellos-I reactor would produce the plutonium necessary for the manufacture of atomic bombs, so its commissioning was an essential step.
“France was the only European power that looked at Franco’s Spain with relative sympathy and its president Charles De Gaulle wanted there to be another nuclear actor on the continent so that The defense of Europe did not depend entirely on the United States“, indicates Muñoz Bolaños.
But internal differences within the Spanish government torpedo the plan.
The Spanish Minister of Industry Gregorio López Bravo proposes that private companies participate in the installation of the reactor, altering the initial plan for a state organization, the National Institute of Industry, to carry out the process.
Muñoz Grandes, Otero Navascués and Velarde himself are aware that it will be difficult to keep the Islero Project secret if private companies take part.
According to Velarde in his memoirs, López Bravo tries to dissuade Franco from going ahead with the Islero Project by exaggerating its cost, 60,000 million pesetas according to the minister, when in the reports prepared by Velarde it is estimated at 20,000.
In 1966, General Muñoz Grandes takes Velarde to a meeting with Franco himself at his official residence, in an attempt to convince the Generalissimo to continue supporting the Project.
To Velarde’s frustration, Franco tells him that he has decided to suspend it because he believes that sooner or later the United States will end up knowing that Spain is trying to develop its own atomic bomb and will impose sanctions on it.
López Bravo was one of those called technocratic ministersa group of politicians who, starting in the mid-1950s, began to promote economic modernization and certain reforms that distanced the Franco regime from the more nationalist and traditionalist postulates of Muñoz Grandes and the old guard that led the coup d’état that led to Franco to the power.
Muñoz Bolaños explains that “López Bravo and the technocrats aspire to the definitive integration of Spain into the Western bloc and do not share the point of view of Muñoz Grandes and the military, who believe that Spain must guarantee its defense by its own means and to do so “They are betting on the nuclear program.”
In the end, López Bravo’s criteria prevail, and the Islero Project remains frozen.
Spain and the Non-Proliferation Treaty
But in the same meeting, Franco tells Velarde that he does not intend to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that in those years promoted American diplomacy to prevent more countries from acquiring atomic weapons.
It also tells you that, if you wish, you can continue researching the topic at JEN.
Frustrated and disenchanted at first, Velarde resumes his work, but no longer with the intensity or resources of before.
In 1974, with Franco already ill and Spain about to begin the turbulent path of its Transition to democracy, the then president of the government, Carlos Arias Navarro, signed a directive that reactivated the Islero Project.
Arias and the then chief of the High General Staff, Lieutenant General Manuel Díez-Alegría, want Spain to have a deterrent arsenal before the end of the 1970s.
A plan is drawn up that provides for the production of 36 plutonium bombsof which 8 will also be used to initiate thermonuclear bombs.
Aware that Franco’s life is ending and of the uncertainty about what will happen in Spain after his death, Washington pays maximum attention to what is happening in the country.
In 1977, Jimmy Carter arrived at the White House and made signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty one of his priorities. countries that have not yet done so, such as Spain.
In 1980, the president of the Spanish government Adolfo Suárez summons Velarde to a meeting in which he becomes interested in the Islero Project.
Suárez is in favor of developing the deterrent arsenal and tells the scientist that perhaps the project can be resumed when pressure from the US subsides.
But Suárez resigned in January 1981 and his successor, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, convinced that the new democratic Spain should seek to integrate into the Western bloc led by the United States, promoted membership in NATO and signed Spain’s accession to NATO in April. the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Its inspectors will be able to visit Spanish nuclear facilities to verify that they are not used for military purposes.
From that moment on, the Islero Project becomes impossible.
How close was Spain to manufacturing its nuclear weapons?
Natividad Carpintero affirms that “Spain could have done it.”
But the professor of International Law at the Autonomous University of Madrid Antonio Remiro Brotóns pointed out in an article published in those years the limitations that this weaponry would have.
“Our country could perhaps be equipped in the foreseeable future with a limited number of primitive atomic fission weapons, fueled by plutonium, of small explosive power, limited in their modes of transport and use, and protected by quite vulnerable systems.”
The expert also indicated that Spain was not in a position to experiment with the hypothetical atomic weapons that it could develop.
Be that as it may, already in 1987, another head of the Spanish government, the socialist Felipe González, announced Spain’s accession to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Only in 2016, two years before he died, Velarde revealed the ins and outs of the Islero Project in an autobiographical book.
He did not ensure that Spain ever had the atomic bomb; yes, at least, that her story was known.
Click to read more stories from BBC News Mundo.
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