A Very Spanish Coup

Thirty years ago next Saturday something didn't happen. Partly because it didn't happen, 27 October 1982 is not afforded great prominence in recent history. There is no 27-O that has slipped into the general vocabulary in the way that both 23-F and 24-F have. What a difference nineteen months made. On 27 October 1982 nothing happened. It was a very Spanish coup as it didn't take place.

Despite 23-F and 24-F having acquired great status as the two days in February 1981 when a coup was attempted and then quelled, they too are indicative of a very Spanish coup. Manuel from "Fawlty Towers" wandered into the parliament building waving a pistol, some shots were fired, things looked a bit dicey for a time, then the King went on telly, and everyone forgot about the coup. It only seemed to confirm a Spanish propensity to cock things up. They can't even do coups properly. They should have known better anyway. Four years before the 1981 attempt, the staff from Grace Brothers, holidaying on the Costa Plonka, had heralded how revolution would be bound to fail.

Of course, revolution hadn't failed in the past. The Spanish were actually pretty good at the art, but that was in the day before Spain acquired some semblance of modernity and had been overrun by mercenary tourists and a film crew for "Are You Being Served? The Movie". 23-F was daft enough. 27-O was dafter still. Both coups were from a bygone era when coups were coups and people really did get shot and governments were overthrown.

What made 27-O especially daft was the fact that the army colonels who had plotted the coup attempt had done so because they didn't want any nasty socialists taking over Spain. They had neglected to notice, however, that Felipe González, destined to be the first socialist prime minister in the post-Franco era, was cut from a somewhat different cloth to the communists who had come to dominate the Republic prior to Franco's revolution. They hadn't neglected the fact that González's PSOE was destined to win the general election on 28 October 1982 - it was this victory that they wanted to avoid - but they had nevertheless neglected the enthusiasm for PSOE among the Spanish people and the expectation for change. They were of the past, out of step, still holding to an outmoded notion of the military as the supreme force in the land.

When the coup was uncovered - some three weeks before it was due to take place - the plotters were arrested. They were dealt with in a kindly fashion. PSOE had no wish to antagonise the army by pressing for swingeing reprisals. Another way of looking at the moderate way in which the colonels were treated is that they were considered fools, deserving of some sympathy. The coup attempt wasn't swept under the carpet so much as it wasn't granted a huge amount of attention. 27-O was swiftly forgotten both because it didn't actually happen and because it didn't merit being remembered.

As a consequence, this coming Saturday is unlikely to arouse much if anything by way of commemoration, except in one regard, that of discussion of the possibility, however remote, of another very Spanish coup or some act involving the military.

In theory, the Constitution drawn up after Franco stripped the military of much of its power. But theory and practice are not always the same thing. The theory hasn't prevented there being hints bordering on threats that the military would intervene because of the Catalonia question. And one might add mutterings from the armed forces that have been critical of the political class as a whole and supportive of protests against austerity measures.

Since the Catalonian president Artur Mas announced his intention to call an election on 25 November which, if he wins, would be seen as giving him a popular mandate to seek independence for Catalonia, the rhetoric has been cranked up. Mas has been warned that he risks being "inhabilitated". This is not an English word, but in being lifted from the Spanish, it describes rather well what his fate would be. A referendum on secession would be illegal, and the Spanish state would find a way to remove him. Such a move would be like a different type of very Spanish coup; the national government ousting a regional government president, and a Catalonian one, to boot. There should be concern at the ramifications of such a move.

If 27-O is likely to pass without any fanfare, 25-N will not. Catalonia and Spain are moving into unchartered territory, one in which different agents will seek to plant their stakes - those of political parties most obviously. But what of other agents? As the rhetoric widens to embrace Mallorca, the Esquerra Republicana having suggested that Mallorcans could opt to be a part of a Greater Catalonia, it might not be, you fear, just the politicians who undertake a battle in this unknown territory.

27-O might be forgotten, but it might be as well if it were better remembered. 


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.