FOR anyone over the age of 55 in Spain, the image is burned into their memory.
A Guardia Civil lieutenant-colonel, armed with a pistol, storms the Spanish parliament and holds the nation’s fragile democracy hostage.
That man was Antonio Tejero, a Malaga-born officer who spent his final years living a quiet retirement in the Costa del Sol town of Alhaurin el Grande.
While his death at the age of 93 in a Valencia hospital this week marks the end of a long life, his place in history was sealed 45 years ago.
In a striking twist of historical irony, his passing coincided with the exact day the Spanish government declassified top-secret military files revealing intelligence service knowledge of his plot.
Spanish officer who led failed 1981 coup attempt dies on day top-secret documents related to the plot are declassified
On 23 February 1981, Spanish Lieutenant Antonio Tejero entered the Congress of Deputies, the lower house of the Spanish Parliament, with 200 Guardia Civil and soldiers and held the deputies hostage for some 22 hours. — Image by © Jacques Pavlovsky/Sygma/Corbis
Born in Malaga province on April 30, 1932, his early years at a military outpost during the civil war steeped him in the fascist values of General Francisco Franco’s regime.
This upbringing cemented a fierce anti-communism and a profound belief in the superiority of the military over civilian governance.
His defining moment arrived on February 23, 1981, a date known universally in Spain as ’23F’.
Accompanied by 200 armed men, he burst into the Congress of Deputies, declared the end of democracy, and fired shots into the ceiling that remain visible today.
Startled politicians, including deputies from the PSOE, the Spanish equivalent of the British Labour Party, were forced to face a blank wall at gunpoint.
At the time, Spain was exceptionally vulnerable following the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez and a relentless assassination campaign by the Basque separatist group ETA.
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Antonio Tejero stormed parliament. Photo: Cordon Press
The coup attempt mirrored the historical ‘pronunciamiento‘, a tradition where military men stepped in to seize control whenever the central government appeared weak.
However, King Juan Carlos, despite owing his throne to Franco, chose to defend the nascent parliamentary system.
Taking to live television in the early hours of the morning, the monarch explicitly ordered all military units back to their barracks, completely neutralising the uprising.
Tejero, having already participated in an earlier plot in 1978, was arrested and handed a 30-year prison sentence for rebellion.
After serving 13 years, he was released in December 1996 and returned to his native Andalucia to live out his days under ‘libertad condicional’, the Spanish term for release on licence.
The man who tried to make himself dictator of Spain now lives in quiet retirement on the Costa del Sol
A recent picture of Tejero before his death, aged 93
A statement from the law firm A. Cañizares Abogados confirmed his passing.
“His death occurred peacefully, surrounded by his entire family and after receiving the holy sacraments,” the firm stated.
His lawyer, Luis Felipe Utrera Molina, took to the social media platform X to praise him as a man of honour with unshakeable faith.
Yet for the vast majority of the country, Tejero remains the failed dictator whose spectacular defeat allowed Spain to firmly shut the door on its authoritarian past and take its place in the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
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