Antonio Tejero, the man behind the 23-F coup attempt, has died.

MadridAntonio Tejero Molina, the mastermind behind the failed coup attempt of February 23, 1981, died Wednesday afternoon in Alzira (Valencian Community) at the age of 93, as reported by the law firm representing his family in a statement. The former lieutenant colonel's death coincides with the same day the Spanish government declassified documents related to the 23-F coup. Tejero had been in poor health for several years and passed away Wednesday afternoon. In the statement, the family's lawyers explained that "in the absolute conviction that death is not the end, [the family] is grateful for all the expressions of affection received during these difficult times and requests the utmost respect for their privacy."

Born on April 30, 1932, in Alhaurín el Grande (Málaga), he joined the Civil Guard in 1951, from which he was expelled after being sentenced to 30 years in prison for military rebellion. He served part of his sentence in the San Fernando Castle in Figueres, a former military prison. In 1996, he was released after serving only half of his sentence.

Tejero has gone down in history for violently storming the Congress shouting "Everyone stay still"During the vote to invest Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo as president of the Spanish government following the resignation of Adolfo Suárez. From that moment on, the 350 members of parliament spent more than seventeen hours held hostage in the Spanish chamber. Tejero arrived accompanied by more than 250 armed Civil Guards and ordered all the elected representatives to lie on the floor while he fired several shots into the ceiling. All the members of parliament obeyed his orders except for three: Adolfo Suárez; the vice president, Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado; and the leader of the Communist Party (PCE), Santiago Carrillo.

Behind the coup were also the second chief of the army staff, Alfonso Armada, and Captain General Jaime Milans del Bosch, who declared a state of emergency in Valencia and deployed tanks. The latter, like Tejero, was also sentenced to 30 years in prison on June 3, 1982, while Armada was only sentenced to Six years because he was held responsible for conspiracy. In that trial, there were about thirty defendants, eleven of whom were acquitted. A year later, the Supreme Court reviewed the sentence and also placed Armada at the forefront of the rebellion. Subsequently, however, Armada was pardoned.

The military operation of February 23rd failed as soon as King Juan Carlos I made a televised address. Wearing the uniform of the armed forces, he expressed his support for the Constitution and democracy, even though his role and the extent to which he knew what was going to happen have often been questioned. Especially since Armada had been Secretary General of the Royal Household, and he is the one credited with the idea of ​​sabotaging the democratic process. "I screwed King Juan Carlos over completely. He had prepared a government to his liking with General Alfonso Armada. But a military officer was needed to carry out the coup. That was me." However, when I saw what it would become, I stopped it," Tejero explained in a interview in The Spanish in October 2023According to his account, when he saw that Armada intended to form a coalition government with members of the left, he aborted the coup. The official and accepted version is not this; rather, Tejero surrendered with the intervention of the king: although he stormed the Congress at 6:30 p.m., he left after midnight. The following morning, the rest of the Civil Guards left.

Before the failed coup, Tejero had already tried to end the nascent democratic process that was beginning at that time. In 1978, he participated in Operation Galaxia, an attempt by a group of military officers to storm the government during a meeting at the Moncloa Palace, taking advantage of the fact that the king was out of Spain on an official trip to Mexico. The plot was thwarted before it could take place, and Tejero was tried and sentenced to seven months in prison, but this did not prevent him from continuing to work as a police officer until the sentencing for the events of February 23, 1981.

The exhumation of Franco

The last time that Tejero was last seen on October 24, 2019 In the El Pardo-Mingorrubio cemetery, on the day Francisco Franco's remains were moved there from the Valley of the Fallen (now Cuelgamuros). He was 87 years old at the time and attended in full dress uniform and tie, amidst applause and shouts of "Long live Franco." There has been little news about him in recent years, though all of it has served to demonstrate his reactionary ideology: in 2012, he filed a complaint against the then-President of the Generalitat, Artur Mas, five days before the November 25 elections of that year, accusing him of "conspiracy and incitement to sedition." This marked the beginning of the Catalan independence movement. Years later, in October 2023, during the amnesty negotiations, Tejero filed another complaint with the Public Prosecutor's Office regarding the "anti-Spanish maneuvers" of the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez.

Tejero still lived to see the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco's death on November 20th, when the A series about the 23-F coup attempt by Alberto Rodríguez and produced by Movistar+It bears the title of Anatomy of a Moment It is inspired by the novel of the same name by the writer Javier Cercas. Filmed in the Congress chamber, which for a few days traveled back in time with period decor, it recreates the attempted coup of February 23rd led by Tejero.