Tejero, Milans and Armada, the coup plotters confronted in the 23-F trial

Barcelona“To the most excellent Mr. Jaime Milans del Bosch y Ussía, lieutenant general of the army, for a completed crime of military rebellion, included in article 287 of the Code of Military Justice, he is sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment”. With enormous expectation, on June 3, 1982, the sentence against those responsible for the attempted coup of February 23 was read. Milans del Bosch and the lieutenant colonel of the Civil Guard Antonio Tejero were considered the leaders of the rebellion and the court-martial applied maximum penalties to them, unlike the mastermind of the coup whom both pointed to: General Alfonso Armada was only considered a conspirator and sentenced to six years in prison. The disputes between Armada and the other two main coup plotters were constant during the trial, which lasted three months (from February 19) at the Army Geographic Service in Madrid.

The coup plotters were basically military personnel (32 out of 33 prosecuted), so it was the military justice system that intervened first - the case would end up in the Supreme Court. 17 judges, 69 witnesses, 26 defense lawyers, the Public Prosecutor's Office led by General Claver Torrent, 66 accredited journalists in the courtroom, and more than 370 members of the public closely followed the proceedings. The trial had 48 sessions and several episodes of disobedience to the court occurred, with the accused refusing to attend on some occasions in protest against journalistic reports - the accreditation of the director of Diario 16, Pedro J. Ramírez- was withdrawn - or leaving the courtroom against the judge's decision because some witnesses considered them “kidnappers”.

Contradictory versions

The trial started from two certainties. The first, that on February 23, 1981, a group of civil guards, led by Antonio Tejero, had stormed Congress with pistols and submachine guns and had held the government members, the deputies of the lower house, and everyone who worked there hostage for more than seventeen hours while the investiture of Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo was being voted on. The second, that the army had occupied the streets of Valencia, with tanks and detachments of soldiers, following the decree issued by the captain general of that military region, Jaime Milans del Bosch. “The tanks respected the traffic lights,” defended Colonel Ibáñez Inglés, Milans' right-hand man, during the trial. Both Tejero and Milans acknowledged their participation in the events, but denied rebellion.

“I had the idea that Congress or the Moncloa had to be occupied for a long time, because if the highest positions of the nation were not held, there was a danger of civil war,” Tejero declared on March 17 during the prosecutor's interrogation.

Tejero, who had already been sentenced in 1980 to seven months in prison for attempting to orchestrate a coup in the so-called Operation Galaxia, explained that the beginning of February 23 dated back to November 1980, when they discussed it with Milans del Bosch. The lieutenant colonel also implicated General Armada, with whom he claimed to have spoken by phone several times and had met two days before February 23 in an apartment in Madrid. Also involved was the director of Cesid - formerly CNI -, José Luis Cortina, who was eventually acquitted by the court due to lack of evidence.

“We occupy Congress on the orders of Lieutenant General Milans del Bosch, with no other desire than the good of Spain, and we do not accept anything other than a government that establishes a true democracy without separatist autonomies [...] and that applies the full rigor of the law to terrorists”. This was the text the coup plotters intended to distribute that day, pointing to the Basque and Catalan Statutes and ETA as reasons to impose a military government.

Milans del Bosch declared that Alfonso Armada, Tejero and himself - and others he did not wish to name - had prepared the coup out of “patriotism”. According to the lieutenant general, Armada - a military man very close to Juan Carlos I - had promised them that the king was aware of it. “Of course I was in favor of occupying Congress, because I thought the king supported it,” replied Milans, who acknowledged that he had withdrawn the tanks as ordered by the monarch by phone. “I thought he had backed down,” he noted.

Milans did not stop reprimanding Armada during the trial, and his lawyer even requested a face-to-face meeting between the two, which was not accepted by the judge. Armada, on the other hand, always denied his involvement and that of the king. “All I wanted was to free the kidnapped people, whether through a government presided over by me or by someone else,” he replied to the prosecutor. On the afternoon of February 23, after having spoken by phone with both Milans and the king, he went to Congress, according to him, to convince the assailants to surrender. He offered Tejero and his men two planes to flee the country - authorized by the general staff - and proposed himself, at Milans' instigation, as president of a government that would also include Felipe González and Jordi Solé Tura, among others. “And did you really think that was constitutional?” the prosecutor asked him.

Tejero did not accept that government (“It gave me a bad feeling”) and hours later surrendered after negotiating that the rest of the civil guards would leave Congress unharmed (most claimed they were simply obeying orders). Tejero dedicated his last words in the trial to railing against Armada and other army commanders: “I want to express my deepest contempt for your cowardice and betrayal”. He was expelled from the courtroom while his relatives cheered him with shouts of “Franco!, Franco!”.

Indignation and appeal to the Supreme Court

The sentence, issued by the Supreme Council of Military Justice, caused indignation among a large part of the citizenry and the political class. 30 years for Tejero and Milans, but 11 of the 33 prosecuted were acquitted, 8 were sentenced to penalties of 2 years or less in prison, and the remaining 12 to penalties of between 3 and 6 years. Immediately, the Spanish Prime Minister, Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, announced an appeal to the Supreme Court. A year later, Armada accompanied Milans and Tejero in the 30-year club, the court sentenced 30 out of 33 prosecuted and doubled the penalty for most of the second-tier figures who participated in the last attempted coup d’état in Spain to 6 or 12 years in prison.