The now known statements of Juan Carlos I to Bárbara Rey, praising the silence of General Alfonso Armada during the seven years he remained in prison for his involvement in the 23F coup, only fuel doubts about the role of the monarch in the coup d’état.
Juan Carlos, I was grateful that Armada didn’t say “a word” after 23F and distanced himself from Fernández Campo for “giving up”
The now known statements of King Juan Carlos I praising the silence of General Alfonso Armada during the seven years he remained in prison for his involvement in the coup d’état of February 23, 1981 only fuel doubts about the role of monarch in the riot. The official version of what happened maintains that the 23F was the work of a group of soldiers excited and nostalgic for the Franco regime, which failed due to the decisive action of the king and the majority loyalty of the army towards the Constitution. A softened version of the Transition that has been maintained for more than four decades thanks to institutional censorship of existing documentation in official archives about what happened at that time.
The most grotesque thing is that the new revelations are not the product of a sudden desire for transparency, nor of an investigation, but of the leak of a conversation held in 1993 between the now emeritus king and his lover. then, the actress and featured Barbara King. In this same conversation, Juan Carlos I criticizes the Secretary General of his House at the time of the coup, General Sabino Fernández Campo, for his language, whom he accuses of having leaked negative information about him to the press . The paradox is that it was Armada himself who proposed Sabino to the position he had held since 1975.
What many do not know are the revelations that Sabino Fernández Campo made to Judge José María García Escudero, instructor of case 23F. In a written statement, Sabino claims that that day, around nine o’clock in the evening, when the government and Congress had already been held hostage for two and a half hours, he spoke by telephone with Armada, who told him suggested going to the Lower House seat and offering himself as president of a concentration government that would put an end to the riot. Fernández Campo claims to have transmitted the proposal to the monarch, who gave his approval to the project on the condition that it was not carried out in his name. Juan Carlos I’s confidant at the time made it very clear in the written testimony he sent to the judge that “I in no way had the idea that he would run for Congress, and I do not nor could I tell him to do it, well, in the logical state, no decision-making power corresponded to me, and on all occasions I acted on the orders and in the name of His Majesty the King” (file 2/ 81, volume 9, folios 2281 to 2301).
The Superior Council of Military Justice which judged the putschists denied the appearance of Sabino Fernández Campo at the hearing, and the proven facts of the sentence completely ignore his statement, disappear the king from history and attribute it to the general José Gabeiras, immediately superior of the Navy as Chief of Staff of the Army (JEME), the authorization to go to Congress, to offer Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero and his men a plane to to leave Spain and, “if he deemed it essential”, the offer to preside over a government of concentration.
As is known, the Armada’s plan failed because Lieutenant Colonel Tejero hoped that his action would result in a military junta and not a government in which the Armada intended to include representatives of all parties, the exception of the nationalists. His refusal to let him enter the room to present his proposal to the deputies caused the coup to fail. The Armada left the Carrera de San Jerónimo palace a few minutes after 1 a.m. on February 24 and it was only then, at 1:14 a.m., seven hours after the assault, that the message from the king condemning the riot was broadcast on television.
The socialist José Bono recounts in one of his memoirs that, while he was president of Congress, in March 2009, Sabino Fernández Campo revealed to him that a few days before the coup d’état, General Alfonso Armada had brought to La Zarzuela a writing by a famous professor. of Law who proposed that the king appear personally at the Congress of Deputies and, after a speech in which he highlighted the bad situation in Spain, proposed a government presided over by an independent and predictable Armada himself. The role attributed precisely to white elephantthe military authority who, on the night of the coup, was supposed to appear in the Lower House to take charge of the situation, but never arrived.
The truth about the dramatic events that occurred on February 23, 1981 remains closed to public knowledge, and neither the law on democratic memory nor the promised modification of Franco’s law on official secrets will change this situation because they prevent access to the allusive documentation. to the Transition and the coup d’état. Repeated attempts by certain parliamentary groups to declassify written, audio or video documents allowing us to know exactly the facts linked to the coup d’état and the role played by the king have also had no effect. Successive governments of the PP and PSOE have systematically refused to do so.
In this age of fake news that seeks to subvert the truth, nothing would be healthier than an exercise in transparency about our recent history. This would avoid the multiplication of self-serving or partisan versions. It’s not about opposing anything or anyone, but rather knowing what happened on February 23, 1981, which put our newly found democracy on the ropes. Unfortunately, we will have to be content, at least for the moment, with the chamber secrets of the emeritus which shed light on our immediate past. This is how the history of our country is written.
