THE Spanish government has vowed to spill all the secrets on one of the most dramatic moments in the country’s modern history.
Prime minister Pedro Sanchez confirmed on Monday that his government will declassify all documents related to the failed coup d’état of February 1981 that threatened to hurl Spain back into the arms of dictatorship.
Known in Spain as 23-F, the jaw-dropping episode saw Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero and 200 armed Guardia Civil officers dramatically storm parliament in Madrid during the investiture of centre-right leader Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo as prime minister.
The officers held MPs hostage for 18 hours before King Juan Carlos I delivered a decisive speech in favour of the rule of law and democracy that brought the coup to a shuddering halt.
Writing on X to coincide with the 45th anniversary of the coup attempt, Sanchez said: “Memory cannot be kept under lock and key. Tomorrow we will declassify the 23-F documents to settle a historic debt with our citizens.
“Democracies must know their past in order to build a freer future. Thank you to those who opened the way.”
Government officials will publish the papers in the Official State Gazette (BOE) on Wednesday with all files related to the coup attempt made available for public view on the La Moncloa website.
Culture minister Ernest Urtasun hailed the move as a ‘first step’ towards greater transparency but called for greater reform of the ‘Francoist’ and ‘outdated’ Official Secrets Law, passed in 1968 under the dictatorship.
The government is currently working on a new Classified Information Law that would replace Franco-era secrecy rules and automatically declassify files after a certain date, although this legislation remains under parliamentary debate.
But opposition politicians claimed the move was an intentional distraction from domestic struggles.
Ester Muñoz, a spokesperson for the conservative Partido Popular (PP), wrote on social media: “Let’s do the smokescreen for the day. The steps of total collapse are being fulfilled.”
Historians believe the newly-released documents may shed light on the full extent of military involvement during the coup attempt, which included a simultaneous rebellion in Valencia led by 2,000 men and fifty tanks under the command of Jaime Milans del Bosch.
The files may also reveal whether there were wider political or institutional sympathies.
Some historians believe Juan Carlos I wrote two separate speeches – one in support of the coup and one against – and only chose which one to read out on live television once he had caught a glimpse of the prevailing public mood.
The archives may also answer questions about what intelligence services knew prior to the coup and the exact role played by leading figures such as Tejero and other army generals.
