Ángel Ballesteros
Ceuta’s Institute of Studies
Ever since I was a distinguished disciple of Tierno Galván at the still golden University of Salamanca, with his thesis on conspiracy, conspiracy and other aspects of political pathology, I have been interested in the coup d’état, which in a filigree work I have differentiated, within the rem publicam vi mutare, from a score of similar but distinct institutions. The coup d’état begins in intrigue, materializes through confabulation, through conspiracy, through contubernium, is vertebrated, perfecting itself, in conspiracy or in conspiracy, and ascends to conspiracy and originates the coup. It is characterized by being secretive by definition, elitist by nature, oligarchic that is aristocratic in the sense derived from the few, from the fewest. And the structure of the intrigue, mother condition and inexcusably minority, involves the heterodox and weightless game of valid and cliques, in an action against the power from the possibilities offered by the power itself by those in charge of defending it. As it also entails the plot of secrecy, consubstantial for success. Catiline failed in his conspiracy because, as Malaparte has pointed out, with the greatest secrecy he anticipated it to the whole world.
Such a long introduction enables us to focus on the 23F, the one that has produced the most literature in Spain, but not because of the protagonists. And that is why, when so many pertinently ask for the modification of the law of official secrets “so that we will know exactly what happened”, they are wrong. First, let us specify that it is the one that has originated more literature in these latitudes. More than that of Franco, where there was an uprising, an “uprising”, to differentiate it in the military jargon of the workers: the military rise up and the workers rise up. And Franco led the former after repressing the latter in Asturias. But he did not stage a coup d’état. If you like, his movement could be typified in this way, somewhat conventionally, in two intimately cohesive parts: his election among the generals, with some ingredients of the political game, with his brother Nicolás and the monarchist general Kindelán, convinced that the Caudillo would soon give way to the return of the monarchy, and the immediate promulgation that he was assuming all the powers of the new State. This would technically be the coup d’état.
Moreover, it should be made clear that what took place in the attempted involutionist movement was an attempt at a “coup d’état”, in Pilar Urbano’s cataloguing, since, as is well known, a coup d’état necessarily implies a change in the title of the first head of state, “the anomalous substitution of the head of state” in Finer’s coinage, which would have entailed a change of regime as in the Greece of the colonels, to give an example close to the Spanish royal family, and that was never in question in Spain.
Returning to the subject at hand, those who believe that the secret file contains the keys to the affair are mistaken, the summary of course includes most of the circumstances, although apparently not all (some of the tapes with recorded conversations would have disappeared) that took place in the public phase, in the uprising, in the cuartelazo, in the putsch if you prefer, “a putsch is a coup that has gone kaput”, Safire pointed out, referring to Hitler’s “beer hall”, because it could have gone ahead had it not been for the ultimately decisive obstructionism of Tejero, but not, of course, of the palatine phase, of its immediate genesis. Of the truly secret. Of the “coup”. Not of the uprising, which had been lurking and publicized in too many circles for a long time and even transmitted live, and with hundreds of first-hand testimonies, even under the seats.
Only three people know precisely what happened. Sabino, who witnessed almost everything relevant, but died without speaking and without leaving anything written. Armada, the protagonist, who already said what “from his conception of honor and loyalty” he could tell. That is to say, without clarifying who was the operational chief, then on the fly pretended to play that role, without succeeding. And the king. Juan Carlos I is often spontaneous, frank, in his statements, in all of them, from the private to the official ones, as we know, for example, those of us who deal with our diplomatic disputes. But here, for whatever reason, he has said no more than what he has said. It is clear that neither my friend Vilallonga, his official biographer, could or would continue to insist. Because, and this would be the major key, the only one, the king considered the defenestration of a Suarez, burnt and today sculpted in bronze in our Avila, as so many living forces, to be opportune. For the monarch, this was the whole operation, beyond his orthodoxy. “Give it to me done”, someone would invent, but it is coherent. When they gave it to him undone, driven also by the queen and her experience, alarmed at the turn of events, crudely plotted and worse executed, aggravated by the militaristic farándula of the ‘tankazo’, he took his time, but he dismantled the attempt. Before, he never saw, simply because it did not exist, any coup d’état.
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