Saints And Sinners: The coup attempt of 1981

23-F. The Spanish love a number and a letter. Great events and not so great events become numerical and alphabetic abbreviations through which these events are afforded the cachet that is supposed to come from contraction. Some events, some dates are great, in that they are hugely significant. 23-F stands for 23 February ("febrero"). The year was 1981. The year of the last attempt at a coup d'état in western Europe.

Thirty years ago, a Guardia Civil lieutenant colonel by the name of Antonio Tejero stormed the Spanish parliament along with 200 or so Guardia officers. His aim, to overthrow the nascent democracy of post-Franco Spain. It was an inglorious failure. It collapsed the following day, 24-F, when King Juan Carlos went on television and, in a speech which cemented his place in the nation's affections, effectively put an end to the coup attempt.

Tejero was something of a comedic figure. He looked like Manuel from "Fawlty Towers". It's alright, the parliament deputies were doubtlessly reassuring each other - "he's from Barcelona". He wasn't from Barcelona, but one's recollections of the coup attempt were that it was all a bit of a farce; this waiter dressed up in military garb, waving a gun around and waiting for Basil to come along and smack him round the head.

It was a bit more serious than this, guns being fired in the parliament and so on, but it had the air of a British comedy cliché. Bumbling revolutionaries, talking in Spanglish "foreign", who put the coup on hold for a couple of hours while they took a siesta. All that was needed was Mr. Humphries declaring himself "free" and the staff of Grace Brothers cowering in the corner while Mrs. Slocombe bemused the revolutionaries with her pussy. Indeed, Captain Peacock and his department-store personnel had anticipated 23-F some four years previously, having found themselves in the midst of a revolution while on the Costa Plonka in the horror that was the "Are You Being Served" film, one that featured Andrew Sachs, typecast as a Spaniard.

Along with its letter and number, the 23 February coup attempt has been granted its own name - "el tejerazo", after the unfortunate and absurd Manuel-Tejero. What made the tejerazo seem even more ridiculous, from the distance of seeing television pictures in the UK, was that it seemed so utterly pointless and that it had come out of the blue. But this wasn't quite so.

The history of Spain's first few years of democracy was anything but smooth. The armed forces were still heavily Francoist and at the time, in 1981, there was economic crisis. The coup attempt was, to some extent, an expression of a widely held view - one that pre-dated Franco - that Spain was not capable of democracy.

Similar economic circumstances prevail at present, but it is most unlikely that a current-day Tejero would turn up at the Cortes lower house with a revolver. The armed forces' role has diminished, to the extent that when the general, José Mena, hinted in 2006 that the military would intervene were Catalonia to become more autonomous, he was promptly put under house arrest.

23-F, for all its laughable qualities, was hugely significant because the failure of the coup was confirmation of the supremacy of democratic principles and of the king as the standard-bearer for the new Spain. Nevertheless, great events tend also to attract the nutters who see conspiracy. So it is with 23-F. It was, so the conspiracy theorists would have it, a put-up job with the purpose of bolstering the king's position. What is unquestionably true is that there was a plan for a later coup d'état. It has not been honoured, if one can say this, with a number and letter, but 27-O (27 October, 1982) was the date, the day before a general election which was easily won by the socialist PSOE. The plot was uncovered and pretty much covered up.

24-F, apart from being the day when the 1981 coup was crushed, is also the day of the miracle of Sant Crist, in Alcúdia at any rate (bewilderingly celebrated in July every three years). In 1507, so legend has it, this was the day when the sweating of blood brought deliverance from drought and famine to the people of Alcúdia and the island. The modern 24-F was not a miracle and nor was it a fable, but it was a day of deliverance. From the past. It was the day when Spain stopped being a farce and started to grow up.


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