The Franquista Coup That Failed

By Thomas A. Sancton

A young king saves a frail democracy

In many ways it might have recalled the stark menace of a Goya tableau. The Deputies in Spain's 350-seat lower house were halfway through their vote on a new government when the heavy rococo doors of the Cortes, the country's parliament in the center of Madrid, burst open. In rushed a dozen armed attackers, most of them wearing olive drab parkas and blue jeans. In the marble corridors outside the chamber, some 200 uniformed men nervously fingered their weapons as they sealed off the exits. The invaders fired their submachine guns at the ceiling to drown out the Deputies' protests, causing plaster to rain over the assembly. Most of the country's elected parliamentarians, the government's senior Cabinet members--indeed Spain's effective democracy--were being held hostage in the ornate chamber.

Deputy Prime Minister Manuel Gutierrez Mellado, a liberal army officer sprang to his feet to confront the raiders, but was butted savagely in the stomach with a submachine gun and manhandled into his seat. Outgoing Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez angrily rose and declared that he still represented the people. "Sit down, pig!" shouted one of the attackers. As shots rang out, most of the legislators ducked, but Suarez remained defiantly upright on the government front bench.

In the first seconds of the assault, some Deputies took the invaders for Basque terrorists. That notion was soon dispelled when they recognized the group's mustachioed leader, a burly officer wearing the shiny three-cornered hat and green uniform of the paramilitary Civil Guards. He was Lieut. Colonel Antonio Tejero Molina, 49, a notorious far-rightist who had already served seven months for a stillborn 1978 plot to kidnap key Cabinet members and spark a military takeover. Neither Tejero's methods nor goals seemed to have changed much since then. Brandishing his heavy service revolver, he commandeered the podium and issued a peremptory statement: the Cortes was to be abolished forthwith, and "a competent military authority" would arrive within half an hour.

Thus began an 18-hour ordeal that confronted Spain's struggling young democratic regime with its most serious challenge since the death in 1975 of Dictator Francisco Franco. Never in postwar memory had the democratically elected parliament of any Western nation been subjected to such an outrage. To many Spaniards the brazen act was all too reminiscent of Franco's own assault on a fragile Spanish republic in 1936; that coup had triggered a bloody three-year civil war and ushered in 40 years of dictatorship. Would his diehard followers now bathe the Cortes in bloodshed and perhaps again bury Spanish democracy beneath military authoritarianism? As it turned out, the outcome was perilously close. But the personal courage and democratic commitment of King Juan Carlos, the collective cool of the captive legislators, and what one of them later called "a tremendous amount of luck" averted bloodshed and saved the regime from military takeover.

At first it seemed that the incident was merely an isolated stunt perpetrated by a handful of fanatical, quixotic hotheads. As more evidence of the foiled coup began to emerge, however, it became clear that the plot had the active support of a number of senior and respected army generals as well as the knowledge and assistance of some influential members of the wealthy old franquista oligarchy.

One of Tejero's main co-conspirators was Lieut. General Jaime Milans del Bosch, 65, a civil war veteran who had also fought alongside the Nazis during World War II. Milans del Bosch had served as regional captain-general in Valencia since 1977. Before that he commanded the Brunete Armored Division, which was based near Madrid, a key unit whose tanks would be essential to any coup attempt. He still had a loyal following among the Brunete officers and apparently counted on some of them to join the plot.

Another conspirator appeared to have been General Alfonso Armada, 60, who had been Juan Carlos' own military instructor in the 1950s and his personal military adviser since the King assumed the throne in 1975. The evidence suggested that Armada was set to become head of a ruling military junta should the coup succeed.

Even before last week's dramatic attack, political tensions had been running high, fueled by a mounting spiral of Basque terrorism and retaliatory police repression. The crisis atmosphere was heightened four weeks ago when Suarez suddenly resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the ruling Union of the Democratic Center (U.C.D.). A tempting opportunity for the military arose when Suarez's hand-picked successor, Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo, 54, failed to win a majority in his first bid for parliamentary approval. It was the second ballot roll call that was under way when Tejero and his Civil Guard henchmen burst into the Cortes.

At 6 p.m. that same day, just before the attack, Milans del Bosch imposed martial law throughout his Valencia region. Shortly afterward, a triumphant Tejero telephoned the general from inside the Cortes and declared his objective achieved "sin novedad" (no news).* Tanks and troops moved into the streets of Valencia. In some of the region's major towns, military officers informed local mayors that they were taking over. At 8:30 p.m., in an apparently related move, armored units briefly occupied the state radio and television studios in Madrid. It was a preview of what would have happened all over the country had the putsch succeeded.

Like many of their fellow officers, Tejero and Milans del Bosch apparently believed that the 43-year-old King would favor a strong military regime as a means of imposing order on an increasingly chaotic democracy. Indeed, Juan Carlos had been aware of several incipient schemes to install military-backed governments--including one that would have been headed by General Armada. To get his longtime adviser out of the palace, the King early last month named him Deputy Army Chief of Staff. The royal suspicions proved well founded.

As soon as Lieut. Colonel Tejero had made his move on the Cortes, Armada informed the King that the army was taking over the country. Tipped off half an hour earlier by friends inside the military, Juan Carlos feigned surprise. Said he to Armada: "They'll have to put two bullets in me before they take over." He then dispatched the general to the Cortes to join negotiations already under way between Tejero and Civil Guard Commander Jose Pedro Aramburu Topete, a loyal officer seeking to end the standoff.

Juan Carlos then telephoned each of Spain's nine regional military commanders to ensure their loyalty. At first only two pledged unqualified support. Some of the generals were apparently waiting to see which way the wind was blowing; others, including the commanders of Seville and Valladolid, seemed to be wavering toward the rebels. But, as a government official later explained, "when they realized how firm the King was, they began to think." The King had already learned of an unexplained mobilization by the Brunete Armored Division that afternoon. He quickly got in touch with General Jose Juste, the Brunete commander, and secured his support. The division stayed put.

Late that evening, Juan Carlos felt confident enough of his military support to go on national television. Dressed in his bemedaled Commander in Chiefs uniform, he warned that he "would not tolerate, in any form, actions or attitudes of people attempting to interrupt the democratic process by force." From that point on the revolt was doomed. Near dawn, recognizing it was no longer any use, Milans del Bosch rescinded his martial-law order.

Back in the Cortes chamber, which was now surrounded by hundreds of loyal national police and Civil Guard units, Tejero and his confederates lapsed into a hopeless waiting game. The vigil finally ended at noon, when a defeated but unbowed Tejero surrendered to Aramburu, his own Civil Guard commander. "You can all leave," he told the weary Deputies. Even in the heady relief of freedom, however, Speaker Landelino Lavilla Alsina adhered to formalities. Snapped he haughtily: "The chair will dismiss the house, Colonel Tejero." With that Tejero was taken into custody, muttering words of self-pity to the effect that "this will cost me 30 or 40 years in jail." A number of his Civil Guards followers, many of whom were naive young recruits, began jumping out the windows of the parliament building to escape or give themselves up.

The loyalist regime moved with comparative caution, however, against the major putschists. Milans del Bosch was arrested almost immediately. By week's end, 26 other officers suspected of complicity had been arrested, including Armada and General Luis Torres Rojas, the military governor of La Coruna. The chief conspirators face trial by courts-martial. The severity of their punishment remained to be seen; Juan Carlos warned the political leaders that a vindictive purge of rightist officers might provoke a dangerous military backlash.

Following their release the Deputies trooped, shaken but unharmed, down the steps of the colonnaded Cortes. Their joyful sense of relief was tempered by concern for the future of Spanish democracy. Said one senior government official: "This has been a good lesson, but we are still ashamed. We thought we were not a banana republic, and we don't want to be one." U.C.D. Party Leader Agustin Rodriguez Sahagun, one of the leaders who had been confined separately in a side room by the kidnapers, summed up his harrowing experience this way: "At the point of machine guns, I realized that of the two gifts we have--life and liberty--there is no doubt that liberty is the most precious."

Shocked and sobered by the attempted coup, the country's political leaders sought to put aside some of their differences. They returned to the pock-marked chamber the following day and elected Calvo-Sotelo their new Prime Minister by an absolute 186-158 majority. That was 16 more votes than Calvo-Sotelo had expected to get in the earlier, rudely interrupted balloting. The Deputies also gave standing ovations to Suarez and Gutierrez Mellado, both of whom had courageously stood up to Tejero. But the loudest applause was reserved for the King, who was praised by Calvo-Sotelo as "the channel through which democracy ran while we were held hostage."

Earlier in the day, Juan Carlos had met with the leaders of all the major parties. He said that the crown was proud to have served the cause of democracy, but warned that he could not always be counted on to "confront circumstances of considerable tension and gravity." In his own diplomatic way he was telling the politicians that if they wanted to keep their democratic processes alive, they would have to abandon their divisive sloganeering and learn to stand up to the military with a strong democratic government.

Whether they could do that once the unifying emergency passed remained to be seen. The dangerous issues of Basque separatism, terrorism and police repression--all of which figured in the military contempt for democracy--continued to haunt the country. Still unanswered was the most critical question of all: Was the coup attempt a kind of last gasp of the old order--or the first threat of its possible renewal?

One thing that seemed certain was the Spanish people's overwhelming belief in democracy and their joy at its deliverance. At week's end, millions filled the streets in nationwide demonstrations that were endorsed by all the major political parties. Nearly one-fourth of Madrid's population marched from Glorieta de Embajadores toward the Plaza de las Cortes. The festive mood was only slightly marred when ultrarightists set off three harmless bombs along the parade route. This time, at least, they were only a rude and futile gesture that hardly interrupted the chants of "Liberty, democracy and the constitution."

--By Thomas A. Sancton. Reported by Roland Flamini and Lawrence Malkin/Madrid

* A phrase made famous by Franco's partisans during the 1936-39 Civil War.

With reporting by Roland Flamini, Lawrence Malkin

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