Antonio Tejero

Antonio Tejero
Born	(1932-04-30) April 30, 1932 Alhaurín el Grande, Málaga, Spain
Known for	Expelled from the Civil Guard by final conviction
Criminal charge(s)	Proposal for rebellion (1979) Military rebellion, as principal, with the aggravating circumstance of recidivism (1981)
Spouse	Carmen Díez Pereira
Military career
Branch	Civil Guard
Rank	Lieutenant colonel
Commands	Chief of the Agrupación de Destinos of the Civil Guard Commander of the Intxaurrondo barracks (Gipuzkoa) Chief of the Comandancia of Álava
Conflicts	Coup d'état of 1981

Antonio Tejero Molina (Alhaurín el Grande, 30 April 1932) is a Spanish former civil guard who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, and was expelled from the corps after being convicted of military rebellion for being one of the protagonists of the coup d'état of 1981, as principal and with the aggravating circumstance of recidivism.

Biography

Military career

Antonio Tejero Molina joined the Civil Guard at the age of nineteen, studying at the General Military Academy in Zaragoza. In December 1955 he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, his first posting being Manresa, where he remained for three years. He requested assignment to the Territorial Police of Spanish West Africa, but it was denied because personnel could not be spared in Catalonia. On the occasion of his promotion to the rank of captain in 1958 he was posted to La Cañiza (Pontevedra) to command one of the companies of the Miño. He was then posted to Andalusia (specifically to Vélez-Málaga) and the Canary Islands. In 1963 he was promoted to major and posted to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The next stage was Badajoz, where he spent the most peaceful moments of his career.

In 1974 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and posted to Gipuzkoa, taking part in the funeral of Corporal Posadas. He commanded the Comandancias of the Civil Guard of San Sebastián and Vitoria.

His time in that territory shaped him as a civil guard; he witnessed the burning of Spanish flags, and he and his men went out to rescue them from the fire, even though they had received orders not to go out for any reason. That cost him a month of arrest in Madrid and removal from his command in the Comandancia.

After that, his next posting was the Headquarters of the Comandancia of Málaga. He lost command of the comandancia when he prevented a demonstration of democrats from different parties and youth organizations demanding the legalization of youth organizations and the age of majority at eighteen, which cost him a month of arrest and removal from the comandancia.

He went to Extremadura, to a piece of land he owned there, and then received his appointment as Chief of the Agrupación de Destinos of the Directorate General of the Civil Guard, posted to Madrid. He wrote the famous letter to the King of Spain, which cost him 14 days of arrest and a possible removal that in the end did not happen. In November 1978 he met in Madrid with some friends at the Galaxia cafeteria, where Operation Galaxia was devised, costing him seven months in prison. After leaving prison, a few months later, the planning of 23-F began.

During his service in the Basque Country he was arrested on three occasions: the first, for disagreeing with minister Rodolfo Martín Villa regarding the withdrawal of the Civil Guard from all places of more than 20,000 inhabitants; the second, for refusing to arrest two civil guards who had detained the head of the commando of the ORT; and the third for asking for instructions on the honors he was to render to the ikurriña. This last one led to his transfer to the city of Málaga, where he was again sanctioned:

... on the occasion of the burial of a civil guard, a son of Málaga, killed in Barcelona, I was ordered that the burial take place at lunchtime, in a van and through the least busy streets. And by my order, the body of the Civil Guard left at twelve noon, on foot and through the main streets and on the shoulders of his lieutenant colonel and other comrades...

Operation Galaxia

Main article: Operation Galaxia

Tejero had already been prosecuted in 1979 for an attempted coup d'état known as Operation Galaxia. For this he was sentenced to seven months in prison. Alongside him, the other two conspirators were a Colonel of the General Staff whose identity is unknown and the Captain of the Armed Police Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas, who was promoted to Major and who was murdered in a terrorist attack at the hands of ETA in Madrid on 17 June 1986.

... Many enigmas also surround the conduct of Major Cortina, not only with regard to his actions in the days preceding 23-F and on that same day, but also with regard to the conduct of the CESID in the months preceding that date. And there are things that do not fit, that are incomprehensible. One of them, the main one, I believe, given that it is an intelligence service, is that the movements of Lieutenant Colonel Tejero after the so-called Operation Galaxia were not monitored—or were they?—; and that all the activity he carried out, and the corresponding meetings with Armada and Cortina, went unnoticed by the CESID. Is that not also very strange?».

Assault on the Congress of Deputies

Main article: 23-F

Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero spent the morning of 23 February 1981 at the Traffic Directorate of the Civil Guard, talking with Colonel Miguel Manchado, who was in command. He had no troops under his command, and needed the support of his comrades to storm the Congress of Deputies. Tejero would count on the decisive help of the Civil Guard captain attached to the CESID Vicente Gómez Iglesias. It has not been clarified, but it is possible that the CESID major José Luis Cortina provided him with radio transmitters on an unusual frequency that drew the attention of investigators. Juan García Carrés, the only civilian in the plot involved in the coup d'état, bought buses, which he registered in the name of Tejero's wife, that would serve to transport the civil guards from the barracks to the Congress of Deputies.

On the afternoon of 23 February, at the head of some 200 civil guards, he stormed the Congress of Deputies, which at that moment was holding the investiture session of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo as President of the Government. He held all the deputies hostage until 10 in the morning of 24 February 1981, when he surrendered as the coup d'état failed. During his irruption into Parliament he was kept informed at all times by Juan García Carrés, a far-right lawyer who had been a leader of the Francoist Vertical Syndicate. To encourage him, he told him that the 2nd Military Region (Seville, Captain General Pedro Merry Gordon), the 3rd (Valencia, Captain General Jaime Milans del Bosch), the 4th (Barcelona, Captain General Antonio Pascual Galmes) and the 5th (Zaragoza, Captain General Elícegui Prieto) supported the appointment of Jaime Milans del Bosch as President of the Government. The 1st (Madrid, Captain General Guillermo Quintana Lacaci), the Balearic Islands (Captain General de la Torre Pascual) and the Canary Islands (Captain General Jesús González del Yerro) were doubtful. The 7th Military Region (Valladolid, Captain General Campano) conveyed to Juan Carlos I that it "is at your disposal for whatever you wish", that is, whether constitutional or not. If the King supported the coup he would support it, and if the monarch did not back it then Captain General Campano would not either. This proved dangerous because several coup plotters were telling their superiors that the actions they were carrying out were supported by the captain general of the Spanish Armed Forces.

It is difficult to know what the ultimate objective of Tejero's action was, although most authors consider him incapable of carrying out an individual action. The question is to determine whether his action corresponded to a golpe de timón ("change of course") intended to create a Government of national salvation with the support of the Royal House and perhaps even of the PSOE, presided over by Alfonso Armada, or whether it was a military coup d'état led by Milans del Bosch that would put an end to the constitutional state by taking advantage of the power vacuum. What is certain is that when Armada told him of his plans for that government to include representatives of all parties (including socialists, communists and nationalists), he did not allow him to enter the chamber and continued with the hostage-taking, waiting for a military uprising in the main cities.

Shortly afterward, when it was already a futile attempt, the infantry major Ricardo Pardo Zancada, with 113 military police from the Armored Division "Brunete" No. 1, formed with four captains, went to the Congress of Deputies to cordon off the building and prevent the entry of the GEO of the National Police. With this, Pardo Zancada sought to convey that Tejero was not alone.

... Subsequently, at around 23:50 on 23 February 1981, General Armada entered the Congress of Deputies, and ordered Lieutenant Colonel Tejero to withdraw the troops from the chamber, because he was going to address the deputies to present them with a political offer of a government presided over by him. As they were both heading to the session hall, Lieutenant Colonel Tejero asked General Armada whether Lieutenant General Milans del Bosch would be part of the government and what kind of measures would be adopted against separatism and terrorism, and since General Armada's answer about the possible composition of the government was not to Lieutenant Colonel Tejero's satisfaction, the latter prevented General Armada from entering the chamber...» Used as a mercenary by the most radical generals of the coup attempt. Tejero Molina carried out the assault on the Congress to establish a dictatorship "because it was his duty as a member of Spain's military system, although he was and remains convinced of what he did; despite the fact that his backers were not as loyal as he expected, he has never shown remorse, together with former general Milans del Bosch, even knowing that by doing so their years in prison would have been reduced.

Prosecution and later life

In 1983 he was tried and sentenced to thirty years of reclusion for the crime of consummated military rebellion, with the aggravating circumstance of recidivism, with the accessory penalty of loss of employment (that is, expulsion from the Civil Guard and loss of rank) and disqualification for the duration of the sentence; he initially served his sentence in the military prison of the castle of La Palma in Mugardos, and subsequently in the castle of San Fernando in Figueres, in Alcalá de Henares and in the naval prison of Cartagena. In September 1993 he received the third degree of imprisonment and was released on parole on 3 December 1996; he was the last of those tried for 23 February to be released. In prison he wrote his memoirs, studied languages and completed a degree in Geography and History.

Removed and expelled from the Civil Guard, he currently lives between Madrid and his apartment in Torre del Mar. He is married, has six children, one of them a priest, and devotes most of his time to painting, a hobby he developed in prison. His only signs of public life were a letter written to the editor of the newspaper Melilla Hoy criticizing the Statute of Catalonia, in 2006, a complaint, in November 2012, against the President of Catalonia, Artur Mas, for conspiracy and attempted sedition, and he made an appearance, on 24 October 2019, together with another group of people at the gate of the Mingorrubio cemetery to oppose the process of exhumation and burial of the remains of Francisco Franco.

On the occasion of the commemoration of thirty years since the coup d'état, media attention discovered that he was staying at a luxury hotel in the municipality of Los Llanos de Aridane, on the island of La Palma.

Political party

In 1982, from prison, he organized a short-lived far-right political party to run in the general elections, Solidaridad Española, using the slogan Enter Parliament with Tejero!, which received the backing of 28,451 votes throughout Spain.

Bibliography

• Various authors: «Memoria de la Transición.» El País, Madrid, 1995.
• Aguirre Bellver, Joaquín: Antes y después del golpe. El Ejército calla, Santafé, Madrid, 1981. ISBN 84-85972-00-7.
• Busquets, Julio; Aguilar, Miguel A., and Puche, Ignacio: El golpe: anatomía y claves del asalto al congreso, 1981.
• Cacho, Jesús: El negocio de la libertad, 1999. ISBN 84-930481-9-4.
• Cercas, Javier: «Anatomía de un Instante.» Essay, 2009. Joan Font Prize, for the best account and dissection of 23 February 1981. (El golpe fueron todos)
• Martínez Inglés, Amadeo: 23-F: El golpe que nunca existió, 2001. ISBN 84-95440-13-X.
• Medina, Francisco: 23F, la verdad, 2006 (written 25 years after the coup with the testimonies of politicians and military men who took part in those events), Plaza Janés, Barcelona 2006. ISBN 84-01-37940-7.
• Segura, Santiago and Julio Merino: Jaque al Rey. Los "enigmas" y las "incongruencias" del 23-F... dos años después. Prologue by Lieutenant General Jaime Milans del Bosch. Planeta, Barcelona, 1983. ISBN 84-320-5692-8.

External links

• Special on 23F at elmundo.es (in Spanish)