The Foreign Affairs Commission of Congress will address and submit to a vote this Tuesday a proposal from Sumar that calls on the Executive to open the procedure for Spain to adhere to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), an agreement that, to date, no NATO partner has signed.
This commitment was assumed by President Pedro Sánchez in 2018, within the framework of the investiture negotiations with the then leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, although the Government has not managed to materialize it.
The proposal, which Europa Press has accessed, recalls the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and emphasizes that, despite the bilateral agreements between the United States and Russia to reduce their arsenals after the end of the Cold War, there are still more than 13,000 nuclear warheads on the planet.
Sumar warns that in the last two decades there has been a deterioration of international commitments regarding nuclear disarmament and that a "arms race" has been reactivated without effective verification systems against the proliferation of tactical or non-strategic nuclear weapons. To this context, it adds the impact of the war in Ukraine, "which places the European continent once again as a possible scenario for the use of nuclear weapons, as happened during the Cold War."
In light of this situation, the multinational group considers a global legal framework like the TPNW "essential" and argues that the only way to prevent the use of atomic weaponry is its total elimination, following the path of the advances achieved in the prohibition of other weapons of mass destruction.
A treaty backed by 100 States and broad citizen support
The TPNW absolutely prohibits, among other actions, the development, possession, deployment, use, and threat of use of nuclear weapons and raises to 100 the number of States that have formally linked themselves to the agreement, adding the States parties and those that have only signed it, as specified in a statement by the Alliance for Nuclear Disarmament.
According to a survey by ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) conducted in May 2026, 80% of the Spanish citizenry supports the country adhering to the TPNW. The Alliance for Nuclear Disarmament interprets this social support as a reinforcement of the position expressed by Sánchez regarding deterrence and nuclear rearmament and calls on the congressional groups to use the vote this Tuesday to advance towards Spain's incorporation into the treaty.
Last February, during the Munich Security Conference, the head of the Executive stated that nuclear rearmament "was not the right path" to strengthen deterrent capacity and warned of the risks it entails, especially in a scenario marked by uncertainty associated with artificial intelligence.
Criticism of nuclear deterrence and a call for Spain's leadership
"Nuclear deterrence requires zero errors," Sánchez stated, assuring that, consequently, "it is not a guarantee but a dangerous bet." In this regard, he highlighted the need for nuclear powers to sit down, negotiate, and stop a new arms race.
In this context, the executive director of the Alliance for Nuclear Disarmament, Carlos Umaña, hopes that parliamentary groups "will know how to take advantage of this opportunity." "The Government has expressed its rejection of nuclear deterrence, a vast majority of the citizenry wants our country to sign the TPNW, and now Congress has a concrete initiative before it to advance in that direction," he noted.
The anti-nuclear organization also emphasizes that Spain can join the TPNW without needing to leave NATO, given that the North Atlantic Treaty does not make explicit reference to nuclear weapons nor legally obliges its members to support them. So far, no state member of the Atlantic Alliance has signed this treaty.