23-F

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Antonio Tejero with a gun in his hand, breaking into the Congress of Deputies February 23, 1981, attempting a coup. Below to the right is the defiant defence minister Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado.
Antonio Tejero with a gun in his hand, breaking into the Congress of Deputies February 23, 1981, attempting a coup. Below to the right is the defiant defence minister Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado.

23-F is the name given to a failed coup d'état in Spain that started on February 23, 1981 and ended the next day on February 24, 1981. It is also known as El Tejerazo from the name of its most visible figure, Antonio Tejero, who conducted the most notable event of the coup by storming into the Spanish Congress of Deputies with a group of 200 armed Guardia Civil agents during the process of electing Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo as the new Prime Minister. King Juan Carlos I gave a nationally televised address denouncing the coup and urging the upholding of the law and the democratically elected government. The coup soon collapsed. After holding the Parliament and cabinet hostage for 18 hours the hostage-takers surrendered the next morning without having harmed anyone.

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[edit] Prior events

The coup d'état of 1981 was closely related to the events of the Spanish transition to democracy. Four elements created a permanent tension that the governing Democratic Center Union (UCD), a coalition of conservative parties, could no longer contain:

  • problems arising from the economic crisis (almost 20% of unemployment coupled with capital flight and 16% inflation [1])
  • difficulties in creating a new territorial organization of Spain,
  • growing terrorist activity by ETA,
  • open opposition by some parts of the army to acceptance of the democratic system

The first signs of unease in the army appeared in April 1977. Admiral Pita de Vega resigned as Navy minister and formed the Superior Council of the Army. This act arose from De Vega's disagreement with the legalization of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) on April 9, 1977, following the Atocha massacre by neofascists (Spanish: 'ultras'). In November 1978, the Operation Galaxia military putsch was put down. Its leader, Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero, was sentenced to seven months in prison.

While insurgent sentiment grew in sectors of the military and extreme right, the government approached a profound crisis at the beginning of the decade, which throughout 1980, became more untenable at each turn. Unfolding key events saw the resignation of the Minister of Culture, Manuel Clavero on January 15; the restructuring of the government on May 3; the motion of censure against Adolfo Suarez by the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) between May 28 and May 30; the resignation on July 22 of the vice-president, Fernando Abril Martorell, which produced a new restructuring in September; and the election in October of Miguel Herrero Rodríguez de Miñón, alternative candidate of the official bid for president of the centrist parliamentary group promoted by Suárez.

The growing weakness of Suárez at the heart of his own party led to his televised resignation as president of the government and of the UCD on January 29, 1981. On February 1, the Colectivo "Almendros" published an openly insurgent article in the far-right newspaper El Alcázar, which was the mouthpiece of the Búnker hardliners, including Carlos Arias Navarro, Luis Carrero Blanco's successor as Prime minister, and the leader of the neo-fascist party Fuerza Nueva, Blas Piñar. From February 2 to February 4, the King and Queen traveled to Guernica, where the deputies of Herri Batasuna received them with boos and hisses and various incidents. On February 6, the engineer Ryan from the Lemoiz nuclear project was found murdered, having been kidnapped a few days earlier. Meanwhile, there was no further news about industrialist Luis Suñer after his abduction.

In this tense climate, the process of choosing Suárez's successor commenced. Between February 6 and February 9, the 2nd UCD congress was held in Majorca, where the party appeared to be in disarray and Agustín Rodríguez Sahagún was named acting president. On February 10, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo was named candidate for president of the government (i.e. Prime minister).

The tensions came to a head on February 13 when news emerged of the death in Carabanchel of the ETA militant Jose Ignacio Arregui, a victim of torture by the General Security Directorate (Dirección General de Seguridad) [1]. A general strike in the Basque region and an acrimonious debate between opposing parliamentary groups in the Congress followed. The government then dismissed various police chiefs, while in the Interior Ministry, there were resignations in solidarity with the torturers. El Alcázar judged the government's actions a show of weakness that needed to be stopped.

Against this extraordinary backdrop, Calvo-Sotelo introduced his government on February 18. But in elections on the 20th he failed to obtain the necessary majority for confirmation as prime minister so a new vote was scheduled for the 23rd. This was the day that plotters had chosen for their coup attempt. It would be the result, on one hand, of a strong effort by Tejero and General Jaime Milans del Bosch and on the other, a more subdued one by General Alfonso Armada, a confidant of the king.

[edit] The coup

At 18:21, the different coup plots that had been fomenting since the beginning of the transition to democracy met in a coordinated action. At 18:30, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero, 200 Guardias Civiles and submachine gunners[citation needed] interrupted the Congress of Deputies of the Spanish parliament. A cameraman recorded almost half an hour of the event, providing the world with an audiovisual record of the attempt. From the rostrum, Tejero ordered everyone to be silent and wait for a competent, military authority who never came.

Whilst almost all deputies dropped terrified on the floor, three kept standing defiantly: acting Minister of Defence Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado, who stood up and ordered Tejero to desist; acting prime minister Adolfo Suárez, who remained sitting down instead of crouching on the floor; and communist leader Santiago Carrillo, who, sitting down, calmly lit a cigarette and did not seem to be disturbed by the events.

General Gutiérrez Mellado, acting Minister of Defence, and Adolfo Suárez ordered the insurgents to disarm. The soldiers assaulted them, following the attack with numerous rounds from a submachine gun round into the ceiling. With the taking of the parliament and the dragooning of the executive and legislative powers, they sought to create a power vacuum in which to establish a new political power.

Moreover, four of the deputies were separated from the rest: the still president of the government, Adolfo Suárez González; the opposition leader, Felipe González Márquez; the second on the rolls of the PSOE, Alfonso Guerra González; and the leader of the Communist Party of Spain, Santiago Carrillo.

Shortly afterwards, the captain general of the 3rd military region (III Región Militar), Jaime Milans del Bosch, rose up in Valencia, put tanks on the streets, declared a state of emergency and tried to convince other senior military figures to support the coup. At nine that night, a communication from the Interior Ministry announced the formation of a provisional government with the undersecretaries of different ministries, under the instructions of the king, to ensure governance of the state and a tight contact with the Assembly of Military Chiefs of Staff (Junta de Jefes del Estado Mayor). Meanwhile, another insurgent general, Torres Rojas, failed in his intent to supplant General Juste in the Brunete division of the military, relinquishing the ambition to occupy strategic points in the capital, among them, the seat of radio and television operations, and the proliferation of a communique about the success of the coup.

The refusal of the King to promote the coup led to it being called off during the night. The monarch assured himself after discussions, personal and with colleagues, of the fidelity of military leaders. He also noted the attitude of the president of the Generalitat de Cataluña, Jordi Pujol, who just before 10pm that evening made a short speech via national broadcasting stations, to all of Spain and the exterior, calling for peace. Until 1am in the morning, negotiations took place around the Congress, with the participation of the acting government as well as General Alfonso Armada, who would later be relieved of duty over suspicion that he participated in the coup.

At 1:14 on February 24, the king interceded on television, in uniform as the Captain General of the Armed Forces (Capitán General de los Ejércitos), the highest Spanish military rank, to position himself against the insurgents, defend the Spanish Constitution and undermine the authority of Milans del Bosch. At that moment, the coup was taken to be a failure. At midnight, Alfonso Armada presented himself in Congress with a dual objective: to convince Lieutenant Colonel Tejero to relinquish his posture and assume himself the role of head of government under the order of the king, in a clearly unconstitutional manner. But Armada was not the awaited "competent, military authority" and Tejero dispatched with him violently[clarify]. For his part, Milans del Bosch, isolated, cancelled his plans at 5am that morning and was arrested, while Tejero resisted until midday of the 24th. In fact, it would be during the morning of the 24th that the deputies would be freed.

Deputy Javier Solana has described how when he saw Tejero reading a special edition of the El País newspaper brought in by General Sáenz de Santa María, which strongly condemned the hostage-taking, he knew that the coup had failed. Tejero was arrested outside the Congress building, and both he and del Bosch were sentenced to 30 years in prison. Thirty people were eventually convicted for the attempted coup.

[edit] Consequences

After the coup, some suspects remained, especially according to the roles played by each one of the instigators and the intentions and resources of Armada. Without a doubt, the most immediate consequence was that the monarchy emerged powerfully reinforced by political resources and the public.

Later, in the judgement which followed before the Supreme Court of Military Justice, known as the Campamento judgment (juicio de Campamento), Miláns del Bosch, Alfonso Armada and Antonio Tejero Molina were condemned as principally responsible for the coup d'état.

The civilian plot behind the coup was never investigated rigorously. Juan García Carrés, ex-leader of the Sindicato Vertical (the only legal trade union organisation in Francoist Spain), was the only civilian to be convicted.

Local nationalists have asserted that the LOAPA law limiting the devolution to the autonomous communities was passed to placate the military.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b El Gobierno nombra Comisario Provincial de Tenerife a un convicto por torturas, Armando Quiñones in Canarias Semanal, 29 March 2005 (Spanish)

[edit] Sources

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Books

  • 23-F: The Coup That Never Existed (23-F: El Golpe Que Nunca Existio) by Amadeo Martinez Ingles, 2001 - ISBN 84-95440-13-X
  • The Business of Liberty (El negocio de la libertad) by Jesús Cacho, 1999 - ISBN 84-930481-9-4
  • The Coup: Anatomy and Keystones of the Assault on Congress (El Golpe: Anatomía y Claves Del Asalto Al Congreso by Busquets, Julio, Miguel A. Aguilar, and Ignacio Puche, 1981 (written a few days after the coup)
  • Un rey golpe a golpe ("A King, Coup to Coup") by Patricia Sverlo, 2000 (limited distribution in Spain)