Antonio Tejero

Antonio Tejero Molina (Alhaurín el Grande, April 30, 1932) is a former Spanish civil guard who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was expelled from the force after being convicted of military rebellion for leading the coup d'état of 1981, as the perpetrator and with aggravating circumstance of recidivism.

Biography

Military career

Antonio Tejero Molina joined the Civil Guard at the age of nineteen, studying at the General Military Academy of Zaragoza. In December 1955 he was promoted to the position of lieutenant, his first destination being Manresa, remaining there for three years. He requested his incorporation into the Territorial Police of Spanish West Africa, but it was denied because in Catalonia it was not possible to do without troops. On the occasion of his promotion to the position of captain in 1958 he was assigned to La Cañiza (Pontevedra) to command one of the Miño companies. Later he was assigned to Andalusia (specifically to Vélez-Málaga) and the Canary Islands. In 1963 he was promoted to commander and was assigned to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The next stage was Badajoz, where he spent the most peaceful moments of his career.

In 1974 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and assigned to Guipúzcoa, participating in the funeral of Corporal Posadas. He commanded the Commands of the Civil Guard of San Sebastián and Vitoria.

His stay in said territory trained him as a civil guard, witnessing the burning of Spanish flags where he and his men went out to rescue them from the burning, despite having received orders not to leave for any reason. That cost him a month of arrest in Madrid and the cessation of his command at the Command. ^{[citation required]}

After that, his next destination was the Headquarters of the Command of Malaga. He lost command of the command when he prevented the demonstration of democrats from different parties and youth who demanded the legalization of youth organizations and the age of majority at eighteen, which cost him a month of arrest and dismissal from the command.

He went to Extremadura, to a piece of land he had there, and then he received the appointment of Head of the Group of Destinations of the General Directorate of the Civil Guard, assigned to Madrid. He wrote the famous letter to the king of Spain, which cost him 14 days of arrest and a possible dismissal that did not happen in the end. In November 1978 he met in Madrid with some friends in the Galaxia cafeteria, where Operation Galaxy was designed, costing him seven months in prison. After leaving prison, a few months later, he began to plan for 23-F.

During his services in the Basque Country, he was arrested three times: the first, for disagreeing with Minister Rodolfo Martín Villa in relation to the withdrawal of the Civil Guard from all major places in 20,000 inhabitants; the second, for refusing to arrest two civil guards who had detained the head of the ORT command and the third for asking for instructions on the honors that he should bestow on the ikurriña. The latter meant his transfer to the city of Malaga, where he was once again sanctioned:

... on the occasion of the burial of a civilian guard, son of Malaga, killed in Barcelona, I was ordered that the burial be at the time of eating, in a van and in the less transited streets. And by my order, the body of the Guardia Civil came out at twelve o'clock in the morning, on foot and on the main streets and shoulders of his lieutenant colonel and other companions...

Operation Galaxy

He had already been prosecuted in 1979 for an attempted coup known as Operación Galaxia. For this act he was sentenced to seven months in prison. Together with him, the other two conspirators were a colonel of the General Staff whose identity is unknown and the captain of the Armed Police Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas, who was promoted to commander and who was assassinated in a terrorist attack at the hands of ETA in Madrid on June 17, 1986.

... Many riddles also involve the conduct of Commander Cortina, not only in terms of his performance in the days preceding 23-F and that same day, but in terms of the behavior of CESID in the months preceding this date. And there are things that don't fit, which are incomprehensible. One of them, the main one, I believe, in the case of an information service, is that they were not monitored—or were they?—the steps of Lieutenant Colonel Tejero after the so-called Operation Galaxy; and that all the activity carried out by the CESID would be unnoticed for the CESID, and the corresponding meetings with Armada and Cortina. Isn't it too weird?"

Assault on the Congress of Deputies

The morning of February 23, 1981, Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero spends it in the Civil Guard Traffic Directorate, talking with Colonel Miguel Manchado, in command. He has no troops under his command, and he needs the support of his colleagues to storm the Congress of Deputies. Tejero will have the decisive help of the captain of the Civil Guard registered in the CESID Vicente Gómez Iglesias. It is not clear, but it is possible that the CESID commander José Luis Cortina provided him with radio transmitters with an unusual frequency that caught the attention of the investigators. Juan García Carrés, the only civilian in the plot involved in the coup, bought buses that he put in the name of Tejero's wife that would be used to transport the civil guards from the barracks to the Congress of Deputies.

On the afternoon of February 23, at the command of some 200 civil guards, they stormed the Congress of Deputies, which was at that time holding the investiture session as president of the Government of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo. He kidnapped all the deputies until 10 in the morning on February 24, 1981, when he turned himself in when the coup failed. During his irruption in Parliament, he was informed at all times by Juan García Carrés, an ultra-right lawyer who was a leader of the Francoist Vertical Union. To encourage him, he told him that the II Military Region (Seville, Captain General Pedro Merry Gordon), the III (Valencia, Captain General Jaime Milans del Bosch), the IV (Barcelona, Captain General Antonio Pascual Galmes) and the V (Zaragoza, Captain General Elícegui Prieto) supported the appointment of Jaime Milans del Bosch as Prime Minister. The Iª (Madrid, Captain General Guillermo Quintana Lacaci), the Balearic Islands (Captain General of Torre Pascual) and the Canary Islands (Captain General Jesús González del Yerro) were doubtful. The VIIth Military Region (Valladolid, Captain General Campano) transmitted to King Juan Carlos I that "it is for what you want", that is, whether it is constitutional or not. If the king supported the coup he would support it, and if the monarch did not support it then Captain General Campano would not either. This turned out to be dangerous because several coup leaders were telling their superiors that the actions they were carrying out were supported by the Captain General of the Spanish Armed Forces.^{[citation required]}

It is difficult to know what the final objective of Tejero's action was, although most authors see him as incapable of carrying out an individual action. The question is whether his action corresponded to a coup de rudder destined to create a Government of national salvation with the support of the Royal Household and perhaps even the PSOE, chaired by Alfonso Armada or if it was about carrying out a military coup led by Milans del Bosch that would end the constitutional state taking advantage of the power vacuum. The truth^{[citation required]} is that when the Navy informed him of its plans to have representatives of all parties (including socialists, communists and nationalists) in said government, he did not allow him to enter the chamber and continued with the kidnapping while waiting for a military uprising of the main cities.

Shortly after, and already in vain, the infantry commander Ricardo Pardo Zancada, with 113 military police officers from the "Brunete" No. 1 formed with four captains, went to the Congress of Deputies to cordon off the building and prevent the entry of the GEOs of the National Police. Pardo Zancada intended with this to make it clear that Tejero was not alone.

... Later, on 23:50 hours on 23 February 1981, General Armada entered the Congress of Deputies, and ordered Lieutenant Colonel Tejero to withdraw the troops of the hemiciclo, because he was to direct the deputies to present a political offer of a government chaired by him. When both were heading to the meeting room, Lieutenant Colonel Tejero asked General Armada if Lieutenant General Milans of the Bosch would be part of the government and what kind of measures would be taken against separatism and terrorism, and as the response of General Armada on the possible composition of the government was not of the satisfaction of Lieutenant Colonel Tejero, he prevented General Armada from entering the hemicile... » Used as a mercenary by the most radical generals of the coup attempt. Tejero Molina carried out the assault on Congress to establish a dictatorship "because it was his duty as a member of the Spanish military system, although he was and remains convinced of what he did, even though his backings were not the faithful he expected, he has never shown repentance, along with the ex-general Milans of the Bosch, even knowing that in doing so his years in prison were reduced.

Processing and afterlife

In 1983 he was prosecuted and sentenced to thirty years in prison for the crime of consummated military rebellion, aggravated by recidivism, with an accessory penalty of loss of employment (that is, expulsion from the Civil Guard and loss of rank). and disqualification during the time of the sentence; He initially served his sentence in the La Palma castle military prison in Mugardos, and later in the San Fernando castle in Figueras, in Alcalá de Henares and in the Cartagena naval prison. In September 1993 he received the third degree and was paroled on December 3, 1996; he was the last of the accused on February 23 to be released. In prison he wrote his memoirs, studied languages and studied Geography and History.

Separated and expelled from the Civil Guard, he currently lives between Madrid and his apartment in Torre del Mar. He is married, has six children, one of them a priest, and spends most of his time painting, a hobby he developed in prison. His only signs of public life were a letter written to the director of the newspaper Melilla Hoy criticizing the statute of Catalonia, in 2006; a complaint, in November 2012, to the president of Catalonia, Artur Mas, for conspiracy and attempted sedition; and he made an appearance, on October 24, 2019, together with another group of people at the gate of the Mingorrubio cemetery to oppose the process of exhumation and burial of the remains of Francisco Franco.

On the occasion of the commemoration of the thirty years of the coup d'état, media attention discovered that he was staying in a luxury hotel in the municipality of Los Llanos de Aridane, on the island of La Palma.

Political party

In 1982, from prison, he organized a short-lived far-right political party to run in the general elections, Solidaridad Española, using the slogan Enter the Parliament with Tejero!, which received the backing of 28,451 votes throughout Spain.