Spain
Parliamentarians from then and now joined together on Wednesday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the failed coup d’état
25.02.11 - 12:28 -
Past and present members of parliament listen to the former president of the house, Landelino Lavilla, on Wednesday. EFE
It was twenty minutes past six on February 23rd 1981 when Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero marched into Spain’s Congress followed by 200 Guardia Civil officers armed with submachine guns. The house was full, as all the members were there to witness the swearing in of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo as the new Prime Minister following the resignation of his predecessor, Adolfo Suárez. Shots were fired into the air - 37 bullet holes can still be seen in the Congress ceiling - and the members of parliament, except for a brave handful, dropped to the floor. This was the start of what was to turn out to be a failed coup that lasted nearly 16 hours during which time the majority of the members of parliament were held hostage in the Congress chamber.
On Wednesday past and present members of parliament joined together to remember the event, known simply as 23-F, and its significance for Spanish democracy on its 30th anniversary.
King Juan Carlos, whose intervention during the night of February 23rd 1981 was crucial, joined the proceedings, joking that he had slept well, “not like that night” 30 years ago. He told members that he is convinced that today we know all there is to know about the attempted coup that he helped to foil by reassuring the country in a television broadcast, soon after one o’clock in the morning, that he was on the side of constitutional order and would not support any uprising.
Former Prime Minister Felipe González, who attended a lunch with the King and 144 of the 350 parliamentarians held hostage during the attempted coup, had his discrepancies about Juan_Carlos’s statement, claiming that “there is still a lot we don’t know” about the events surrounding 23-F. A number of experts support this opinion, as they claim that it is still not known exactly who was behind the plotting of the coup on the civilian side, and the role of the State intelligence services, then the Cesid, is still not clear.
The anniversary events continued with speeches in a packed parliament chamber. President of the house, José Bono, also stressed the importance of the King’s position. “That night, when guns were fired to silence freedoms, the King rose to the occasion, he won the social legitimacy of his subjects by showing that he was on the side of the people. That night he did more for democracy and for the monarchy than all of his ancestors put together”, he stated.
Something Wednesday’s celebration did achieve was to bring together past and present politicians who are normally at loggerheads. Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero chatted amiably with the opposition leader Mariano Rajoy, while the founder of the PP and minister under Franco, Manuel Fraga, and the former Communist leader Santiago Carrillo, proved that the distance between them back in 1981 is little more than a memory.
The anniversary events also provided the chance to recall some of the details of the failed coup that everyone who was in Spain at the time remembers well. When Tejero barged into Congress with his armed guards everyone in the house dropped to the floor, except for three. They were the acting Minister of Defence, Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado, who stood up; the acting Prime Minister,_Adolfo Suárez, who remained seated; and Santiago Carrillo, who remained “firm and serene in his seat”, in the words of Bono, even lighting up a cigarette. Then there was Txiki Benegas, a member of parliament who happened to be chatting to a reporter when Tejero burst in, and managed to leave the building pretending to be one of the journalists.
