Colonel Tejero, writer of the final tried coup in Spain, dies | EUROtoday

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Television footage from the time confirmed Prime Minister Suarez and Deputy Prime Minister Gutierrez Mellado unperturbed as Colonel Tejero fired photographs from his pistol and different rebels fired automated weapons to silence murmurs of protest. It was February 23, 1981 and Spain was witnessing an tried coup d’état by the hands of a fifty-year-old colonel and 200 mutineers from the Guardia Civil, six years after the loss of life of dictator Francisco Franco. Attack on the decrease home of parliament and authorities seized. That day, Suarez’s successor was determined. The intervention of King Juan Carlos thwarted that tried coup which lasted 18 hours: in an early morning televised speech, the king declared his religion in democracy and ordered the repression of the revolt. The deputies left Parliament at noon.

Today, February 25, 2026, on the age of 93 (he would have turned 94 on April 30), Colonel Antonio Tejero dies in his dwelling in Valencia. The identical day in Spain the paperwork referring to the tried coup d’état had been declassified.

Juan Carlos is now not king, and Spain has modified lots: forty-four years in the past it was a rustic that was making an attempt to emerge from many years of navy dictatorship, democracy was nonetheless a bet and Juan Carlos proved to be trustworthy to it. However, the picture of Antonio Tejero with the gun in his hand within the hemicycle remained within the reminiscence, and went world wide.

Tejero Molina entered the General Military Academy of Zaragoza on the age of 19 and served in numerous areas earlier than changing into commander of the Guardia Civil in Malaga. Even then he confirmed hostility in the direction of the brand new democratic order, dropping command after making an attempt to forestall an indication of democracy supporters, a circumstance that value him a month of arrest.

In 1978 he was among the many creators of the so-called Operation Calaxia, the primary coup try in opposition to the federal government of Adolfo Suarez and its institutional reforms. The motion didn’t materialize, however Tejero was sentenced to seven months in jail. Once out, he ready the coup d’état of February 23, when, main 200 males, he broke into Congress through the vote for the investiture of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo’s authorities as president. The assault, broadcast stay on TV, ended the next morning, after the failure of the coup with Juan Carlos I ordering the troopers to return to the barracks.