An old-fashioned coup
Raymond Carr
The twenty-third of February will not go down in history as another 18 July, which is celebrated in Francoist Spain as the day on Which the army rose to begin a civil war — What Francoists called a crusade — to liberate Spain from the evils of 'inorganic democracy'. Colonel Tejero represents the lunatic right in the security forces; in November 1978 he planned 'operation Galaxia' with the intention of kidnapping the government. On Monday he was more ambitious; he bottled up the government and the deputies in the Cortes building. It was an old-fashioned coup. General Pavia did the same thing in a more gentlemanly fashion in January 1874. The good colonel had not read Malaparte's Technique of the C'oup d'Etat: nowadays you don't seize Politicians; you take over the power stations.
General Milans del Bosch was hoping that history might repeat itself. His pronunciarniento in Valencia was a carbon copy of the rising of 18 July 1936: the declaration of a state of emergency, prohibition of strikes and political activity in the hope that other generals would 'pronounce' in a painless military take-over. Like Tejero (and we do not know the exact connection between them) he was an unreconstructed Francoist, still steeped in the mystique of the crusade, Whose views on the awful consequences of democracy had been publicised in an important interview in the Madrid daily ABC. No general supported him. Tejero did not become the General Pavia de nos fours, nor did Milans del Bosch find fellow generals willing to rise in another Glorious 18 July. The Spanish army has always acted on a perfectly coherent political theory: when 'the nation' is betrayed by self-seeking party politicians who leave 'government in the gutter' then the general Will of the nation is to be found in the Officers' mess, and the army must intervene to ensure that the will of the nation triumphs over partisan politics. This theory implies widespread civilian support. This Pavia had in 1874 when he bundled the deputies out of the Cortes and ended the Federal Republic; this Franco and his fellow conspirators had in July 1936. Most army officers think before they act and are resistant to flinging away their careers in hopeless gestures, even if they subscribe to Alcazar which thunders against degenerate democracy. Who would have supported a return to neo-Francoism installed by the military? Bias Pinar and his Fuerza Nueva (New Force) bring out mass demonstrations on the feast days of Francoism; they are a naSty amalgam of the nostalgic over-sixties and the rootless under-twenties. Those who turn up at the ritual shouting matches probably represent the sum of their strength. The considerable conservative forces — bankers are a good example — who supported the Nationalists in 1936 have no desire to return to an authoritarian regime, if for no other reason than that it would exclude them from the EEC. That large sectors of the middle class moan about taxation, the spread of pornography and crime does not mean that they want to revert to a regime that would bring back to Spain the moral and political isolation in Europe of the 1940s and 1950s. In 1936 fascism appeared to be on the ascendant in Europe; it was a fashionable model. It is now a discredited relic.
Above all there is King Juan Carlos, a seemingly ordinary man to whom democratic Spain owes an extraordinary debt. It was the king who legitimised the coming of democracy; without him the negotiating skills of Suarez, essential though they were, would have been of no avail. Most important of all he is Commander-in-Chief of the Army to whom all officers swear loyalty. He is a soldier king, a product of the Saragossa Military Academy. He understands the army from the inside. He expresses sympathy with its sense of outrage as officers see their comrades shot down by Basque terrorists; but he warns them that any army which loses, its discipline (which in the Spanish context, means that it does not obey the civil government) ceases to be an army. The most serious crisis on the road to democracy was the legalisation of tile Communist Party on 9 April 1977; we do not know what part the king played in keeping army protests muted; his steady and known commitment to the constitution was all-important on the night of 23 February.
One cheerful aspect of this tragi-comic episode is that no one will try again. Nothing fails like failure. But it has highlighted the continued presence of Francoists in the security forces. This is a result of conscious policy and necessity. Conscious policy because the new democracy wanted to avoid Franco's manichaean divi sion between goodies and baddies, between the victors of the Civil War, who should enjoy the fruits of victory, and the vanquished who should be excluded from the public life of Spain. An era of proscription was ruled out: even the Francoist chief of the Security Police continued en poste. Necessity because the government was confronted by Basque terrorism and could not dismantle or drastically purge the only instruments — the Civil Guard and Security Police — it possessed to fight it. The oddest feature of the whole episode is that Tejero, condemned by a military court for an attempt to overthrow the government, was let out after six months for a second shot.
Trained in authoritarian techniques, indoctrinated that protest is sedition, officers of thZ'Civil Guard like Tejero have little sympathy with their civilian masters and sometimes get little sympathy from them. Stationed in the Basque provinces surrounded by a civilian population which tends to regard them as an army of occupation, their resentment mounts and their techniques get tougher as they suffer heavy casualties. They express their frustration at the funerals of their comrades. Tejero's coup was, one hopes, their final fling. The great problem that now faces the government will be how to get rid of Tejero and his ilk without destroying the cohesion of 'the Institute' as the Civil Guard has proudly called itself since its formation as a paramilitary force to deal with midnineteenth-century rural brigandage.
This brings one back to the Basque problem — without any doubt the most serious issue that has faced the new democracy. The demands of ETA Militar (the terrorist branch of ETA supported by the elected representatives of Herri Batasuna who tried to drown the King's speech by chanting the Basque anthem at Guernica) are not negotiable. The Basques now have their autonomous government and one must hope that what Mao called 'water for the fish to swim in' — that is, support among the general population without which terrorists cannot operate — will drain away. It is the Basques of ETA who are morally responsible for 23 February. They have always wished to 'destabilise' democracy by pushing it to the far right.
Milans del Bosch professed he was filling a political vacuum — the old cry of 1936 that government was 'in the streets', that public order had collapsed. He could claim this because the internal squabbles of the governing party — the UCD — had forced the resignation of Adolfo Suarez, leaving Spain without a prime minister. The party Congress in Majorca was an unedifying spectacle of ancien regime personalist politics. One hopes that men of good will will now rally round Calvo Sotelo as the new, prime minister, lie has a difficult time in front of him. He has to replace the presidential style of Suarez, the insomniac, coffee-drinking card player secluded in the Moncloa Palace, by a leadership more consonant with open democratic politics. Good luck to him.
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