The Anatomy of a Moment

Notes

Prologue. Epilogue to a Novel

The poll is mentioned in Umberto Eco’s article, ‘Érase una vez Churchill’, El Mundo, 20.3.2008. See also articles on the same poll in the Mirror 04.02.2008 and the Telegraph 03.02.2008.

The article is called ‘La tragedia y el tiempo’, La Repubblica, 23.2.2006, later published in La verdad de Agamenón, Barcelona, Tusquets, 2006, pp. 39–42.

The Cortes declaration can be found in Amadeo Martínez Inglés, Juan Carlos I, el último Borbón, Barcelona, Styria, 2007, p. 264.

Jorge Luis Borges, tr. Norman Thomas di Giovanni, ‘The Life of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz’, in The Aleph & Other Stories, New York, Dutton, 1970.

Julián Marías, Una vida presente, Madrid, Páginas de Espuma, 2008, p. 740.

[ Translator’s note: English is intriguingly short of home-grown words for the act of overthrowing governments and the people who do such things. We generally rely on the French coup d’état and occasionally turn to the Swiss-German putsch, or putschist. Since this particular golpe de estado came very close to happening in Spain, I have chosen to stick to the Spanish word golpista for the soldiers and politicians discussed in this book.]

Part One. The Placenta of the Coup

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, ‘Los héroes de la retirada’, El País, 25.12.1989. Also published as ‘Europe in Ruins’, translated by Piers Spence, in Granta 33, 1990, pp. 136–142.

Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, Memoria viva de la transición, p. 52.

‘“The only way they’re going to get me out of here is by beating me in an election. .”’ One of the visitors to Moncloa to whom Suárez made a statement of this sort was Fernando Álvarez de Miranda, Del ‘contubernio’ al consenso, Barcelona, Planeta, 1985, p. 145. Alfonso Guerra’s quote comes from Cuando el tiempo nos alcanza, p. 297; Hemingway’s is from an interview with Dorothy Parker, ‘The Artist’s Reward’, New Yorker, 30 November 1929, p. 20; the Camus quote is from The Rebel, tr. Anthony Bower, London, Penguin, 2006; Melià’s, from La trama de los escribanos del agua, pp. 55–56. Melià’s conjecture — that Suárez’s first thought on hearing the Civil Guards’ gunshots was the next day’s front pages — is endorsed by various statements from Suárez himself: see Luis Herrero, Los que le llamábamos Adolfo, pp. 224–225, or Jorge Trías Sagnier, ‘La cacería de Suárez y el 23 de febrero’, ABC, 23.2.2009, who quotes an unpublished projected memoir that Suárez drafted and which is in the personal archive of Eduardo Navarro, one of the former Prime Minister’s most loyal and closest collaborators.

Suárez is quoted in Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, Memoria viva de la transición, p. 26.

‘“Because I was still Prime Minister of His Majesty’s government. .”’ See for example the audio-visual report by Victoria Prego (‘Asalto a la democracia’, in El camino de la libertad, Barcelona, Planeta/De Agostini, 2008), where he says: ‘I was the Prime Minister of the government and I did not feel like throwing myself to the floor, simply because I am the Prime Minister. And the Prime Minister should not do that. I understand those who did perfectly; probably if I hadn’t been Prime Minister I would have done the same. But I’m the Prime Minister of the government.’

‘For this reason we don’t need to pay too much attention to the politicians. .’ Pablo Castellano, PSOE deputy, writes for example: ‘When Tejero burst into the chamber I had the feeling that very few of us were surprised. Those who, from one party or another, were not in the know’; Yo sí me acuerdo. Apuntes e historias, Madrid, Temas de Hoy, 1994, p. 344. Ricardo Paseyro is quoted in Juan Blanco, 23-F. Crónica fiel. ., p. 131.

See Sol Alameda’s interview with Suárez in Santos Juliá et al, eds., Memoria de la transición, p. 454. ‘Everything is tied up and well tied.’ The first Franco quote can be found in Discursos y mensajes del jefe del estado. 1968–1970, Madrid, Publicaciones Españolas, 1971, p. 108; the second, in Discursos y mensajes del jefe del estado, 1960–1963, Madrid, Publicaciones Españolas, 1964, p. 397. As for Jesús Fueyo’s phrase, see Pueblo, 24.11.1966, quoted by Juan Pablo Fusi, España, de la dictadura a la democracia, Barcelona, Planeta, 1979, p. 236. Franco’s will can be read in Stanley G. Payne, The Franco Regime 1939–1975, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1987, p. 620.

The first time Tarradellas speaks of the necessity for a touch on the rudder is 14 June 1979; see Juan Blanco, 23-F. Crónica fiel. ., p. 49; the quote comes from El Alcázar, 4.7.1980; but on the first Sunday in May of that year the former Catalan premier had already declared to El País: ‘If there is not a firm and swift touch on the rudder, a scalpel will have to be used.’ Quoted by Santiago Segura and Julio Merino, Las vísperas del 23-F, Barcelona, Plaza y Janés, 1984, p. 286. Footnote. I took the first two statistics from Mariano Torcal Loriente, ‘El origen y la evolución del apoyo a la democracia en España’, Revista española de ciencias políticas, no. 18, April, 2008, p. 50, and the third from Joaquín Prieto, El País, 28.10.2007.

Joaquín Aguirre Bellver, ‘Al galope’, El Alcázar, 2.12.1980, reprinted in El ejército calla, Madrid, Ediciones Santafé, 1981, pp. 129–130. On the various political operations mentioned, see for example Xavier Domingo, ‘Areilza aspira a la Moncloa’, Cambio 16, no. 456, 31.8.1980, pp. 19–21; Miguel Ángel Aguilar, ‘Sectores financieros, militares y eclesiásticos proponen un “Gobierno de gestión” con Osorio’, El País, 27.11.1980; José Oneto, ‘La otra Operación’, Cambio 16, no. 470, 1.12.1980, p. 21.

Pilar Urbano, ABC, 3.12.1980.

Fernando Latorre, under the pseudonym Merlín, in his usual section ‘Las Brujas’, Heraldo Español, 7.8.1980. Fernando de Santiago, ‘Situación límite’, El Alcázar, 8.2.1981. Antonio Izquierdo, under the pseudonym Telémetro, ‘La guerra de las galaxias’, El Alcázar, 24.1.1981. The three artícles by Almendros, all published in El Alcázar, were: ‘Análisis político del momento militar’, 17.12.1980; ‘La hora de las otras instituciones’, 22.1.1981; and ‘La decisión del mando supremo’, 1.2.1981. Footnote See Manuel Fraga, En busca del tiempo servido, p. 232. Information on the police informant’s report can be found in Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante, p. 233. The article from Spic is reproduced by Pilar Urbano, in Con la venia. ., p. 363.

Emilio Romero, ‘Las tertulias de Madrid’, ABC, 31.1.81.

Francisco Medina, 23-F, la verdad, Barcelona, Plaza y Janés, 2006, pp. 89–117. Armada, Al servicio de la Corona, p. 92. The suspicions of connivence between Anson and Armada actually began to circulate immediately after the coup; see José Luis Gutiérrez, ‘Armada & Ansón’, Diario 16, 2.3.1981. As for Armada’s government, see footnote to p. 286. On the relationship between Suárez and Anson, see Gregorio Morán, Adolfo Suárez, pp. 40–42, 189, 297–298 and 305–306, and Luis María Anson, Don Juan, Barcelona, Plaza y Janés, 1994, p. 403.

‘. . his diaries of the time abound in notes about dinners. .’ See Manuel Fraga, En busca del tiempo servido, pp. 225–226 (22 November: ‘I’ve received reliable information that General Armada would be prepared to lead a government of national unity’) or 231 (3 February: ‘Political lunch during which the importance of Armada’s promotion [to Deputy Chief of the Army General Staff] was emphasized; several pushing him as “the solution”’). Juan de Arespacochaga, Carta a unos capitanes, Madrid, CYAN, 1994, pp. 274–275. Fraga is quoted in Juan Blanco, 23-F. Crónica fiel. ., p. 135.

‘. . it’s very likely that the nuncio and some bishops were informed. .’ Juan de Arespacochaga claims that they were in Carta a unos capitanes, p. 274. See also, for example, Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez, 23-F. La conjura de los necios, p. 191; or Palacios, El golpe del CESID, p. 385.

Armada’s version of his interview with Múgica is in Al servicio de la Corona, p. 224; Múgica’s version is in El Socialista, 11–17 March 1981, and in El País, 13.3.1981. Armada states that he notified his Captain General, who in turn informed the Zarzuela, and the Palace told Suárez: see Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante, p. 92. Some time later Múgica told Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo that at the meeting in Lérida Armada explained his idea of a government of unity and that, when the general wondered who might lead it, Raventós interrupted: ‘Who’s going to lead it? You are.’ Calvo Sotelo interviewed by Rosa Montero, in Santos Juliá et al, eds., Memoria de la transición, p. 522. As for the Socialists’ contacts with the leaders of the minority parties — specifically the PNV and Convergència i Unió — see Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante, pp. 93–96, or Antxon Sarasqueta, De Franco a Felipe, Barcelona, Plaza y Janés, 1984, p. 137. The interview between Jordi Pujol and a member of PSOE is reported by Andreu Farràs and Pere Cullell in El 23-F a Catalunya, Barcelona, Planeta, 1998, pp. 53–54. On the rumours of another no-confidence motion by the PSOE and its plans to enter an interim government, see section 10 of this same chapter and ‘. . because at that time the leaders of the PSOE often discussed the role the Army. .’ One example: on 9 January Múgica gave a speech at the Club Siglo XXI in the presence of leading right and centrist politicians involved in different operations against the Prime Minister — Alfonso Osorio and Miguel Herrero de Miñón among others; according to Miguel Ángel Aguilar’s write-up for El País, the Socialist leader ‘described the conditions that would have to exist for legitimately constituted power to find itself obliged to call on its armies to maintain individual rights and the security of the state’; he also ‘made a constitutional excursion to article 116, which deals with the proclamation of the state of siege and the guarantees that should apply’.

Alfonso Guerra cited in Abella, Adolfo Suárez, p. 421.

‘. . it perhaps hastens the departure from the government of Deputy Prime Minister Abril Martorell. .’ Relations between Suárez and Abril, however, had already deteriorated seriously by that point, and it’s likely that Suárez would soon have replaced his Deputy Prime Minister in any case; see Abella, Adolfo Suárez, pp. 432–434; Luis Herrero, Los que le llamábamos Adolfo, p. 196; and Julia Navarro, Nosotros, la transición, Madrid, Temas de Hoy, 1995, p. 17. Miguel Herrero de Miñón’s article is called ‘Sí, pero. .’, El País, 18.9.1980, reprinted in Memorias de estío, pp. 211–213.

‘. . in the middle of January the rumours that have been circulating with variable intensity since the summer proliferate. .’ See for example articles by Fernando Reinlein and Abel Hernández, in Diario 16 and Ya respectively, published on 24 January. Reinlein writes: ‘The far-right offensive against the democratic institutions can back up a soft alternative regression [. .] A few days ago in political circles Diario 16 was told that two involutional alternatives were being assessed, one “soft” and the other “hard” [. .] According to these sources, the second hypothesis being ruled out as not very viable and unnecessary, the first may still be alive in the minds of many.’ Hernández is undoubtedly alluding to this latter alternative when he states that, ‘according to reliable sources’, the hypothesis of a government of national unity or salvation or ‘authority’ with a soldier in charge is being strongly considered (‘and, according to these sources, they have one already prepared’), a government formed basically of centrists and Socialists; according to Hernández, ‘it seems beyond doubt that senior military officers have held and are holding conversations with prominent Socialist leaders, as well as those from the centre and other parties’ with a view to a manoeuvre that, as the journalist describes it, seems to resemble the soft coup: ‘All the sources consulted insist they’re not talking about an actual military coup, but a very well-planned attempt to bring order to the situation precisely to avoid a military coup. According to prominent politicians who are involved in the conversations, the “operation” is inevitable and is practically finalized’ (Five days after this article Hernández reports again on the pressures to form a government of salvation in ‘La tregua’, Ya, 29.1.1981). That Suárez knew that General Armada was at the forefront of this operation is confirmed by, for example, Fernando Álvarez de Miranda — one of the Christian Democrat leaders in the UCD most critical of the Prime Minister — who held a long conversation with him around that time: ‘I told him again, finally, that, in my opinion, the situation was very bad, that the warning lights had been flashing for democracy for a while now and that, not having an absolute majority in Parliament, he should seek a coalition with the opposition party. He looked at me sadly, saying: “Yes, I know full well they all want my head and that’s the message even from the Socialists: a coalition government, led by a soldier — General Armada. I won’t bow to such pressure even if it means me leaving Moncloa in a coffin”’; Del ‘contubernio’ al consenso, p. 145. (Also in Paul Preston, Juan Carlos: A People’s King, p. 451.) As for the rumours of a no-confidence vote, years after his resignation Suárez said to Luis Herrero — a personal friend of his and son of his political mentor Fernando Herrero Tejedor — ‘I discovered there was a conspiracy at the heart of the parliamentary group to make me lose a no-confidence vote, the second in a few months, which the PSOE was about to table. Several UCD deputies had already stamped their signatures on it and the papers were kept in a safe’; Los que le llamábamos Adolfo, p. 213. Furthermore, Miguel Herrero de Miñón admits that they initiated procedures to table the no-confidence motion. See Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante, p. 116.

In 23-F. La conjura de los necios, pp. 190–191, Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez give details of the meeting between Armada and Todman, according to them held at an estate belonging to Dr Ramón Castroviejo. There is reliable information about Todman and the American government and his relation to the coup in Calderón and Ruiz Platero, Algo más que el 23-F, pp. 203–209.

‘Even some Communist leaders [. .] Even the leaders of the main trade unions. .’ On the first — specifically, on Ramón Tamames — see Santiago Carrillo, Memorias, p. 710; on the second — specifically, on Marcelino Camacho and Nicolás Redondo — see Santiago Segura and Julio Merino, Las vísperas del 23-F, pp. 266–267.

‘Panorama of Operations Under Way’ can be found in Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante, pp. 280–293; in Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez, 23-F. La conjura de los necios, pp. 295–308; or in Pardo Zancada, 23-F. La pieza que falta, pp. 403–417.

‘Many who have investigated 23 February. .’ See for example Fernández López, Diecisiete horas y media, pp. 214–218, and Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante, pp. 223–232. Footnote See Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez, 23-F. La conjura de los necios, pp. 116–119.

‘. . The two notes from CESID. .’ can be found in Juan Blanco, 23-F. Crónica fiel. ., pp. 527 and 529; the edict published by Milans del Bosch in Urbano, Con la venia. ., pp. 360–364, or Pardo Zancada, 23-F. La pieza que falta, pp. 416–417.

General Juste’s quote can be found in Pardo Zancada, 23-F. La pieza que falta, p. 81, whose description of events at the Brunete Armoured Division I essentially follow.

Part Two. A Golpista Confronts the Coup

Gutiérrez Mellado’s opinion on Franco’s coup d’état can be found in Al servicio de la Corona. Palabras de un militar, Madrid, Ibérica Europea de Ediciones, 1981, p. 254.

‘A historiographical cliché. .’ On the question of the so-called ‘pact of forgetting’, exhaustively discussed in recent years, see two indispensable articles by Santos Juliá: ‘Echar al olvido. Memoria y amnistía en la transición’, Claves de Razón Práctica, no. 129, January — February 2003, pp. 14–24; and ‘El Francoismo: historia y memoria’, Claves de Razón Práctica, no. 159, January — February 2005, pp. 4–13. Max Weber, ‘Politics as a vocation’, Essays in Sociology, Ed. H.H. Gerth & C. Wright Mills, Oxford, Routledge, 1991, p. 118.

‘One is either in politics and leaves the military. .’ Gutiérrez Mellado expressed the same idea in various ways. See Puell de la Villa, Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado, p. 160.

Carlos Iniesta Cano, ‘Una lección de honradez’, El Alcázar, 27.9.1976.

‘. . as long as it had its current statutes. .’ We don’t know what Suárez’s exact wording was, but this is, more or less, what he attributed to himself in the interview with Sol Alameda: see Santos Juliá et al, eds., Memoria de la transición, p. 452 (‘My answer was that with the current statutes of the PCE its legalization was impossible’); or also his statements to Nativel Preciado, quoted by Nicolás Sartorius and Alberto Sabio, El final de la dictadura, p. 743. In Alameda’s interview Suárez states that he did not speak of legalization of the PCE on his own initiative, as has been claimed on many occasions (see for example what his Deputy Prime Minister of the time, Alfonso Osorio, says in Victoria Prego, Así se hizo la transición, pp. 536–537), but rather in reply to the officers’ questions. One credible version of what might have happened at that decisive meeting is in Fernández López, Diecisiete horas y media, pp. 17–20, which is where General Prada Canillas’ quote comes from. The quote from Suárez’s speech in the Francoist Cortes is from Prego, Así se hizo la transición, p. 477.

‘Some military men and democratic politicians have frequently reproached Suárez for this way of proceeding. .’ Among them, for example, Alfonso Osorio (Trayectoria de un ministro de la Corona, p. 277), or Sabino Fernández Campo (Javier Fernández López, Sabino Fernández Campo. Un hombre de estado, Barcelona, Planeta, 2000, pp. 98–103). As for the time it took Suárez to decide to legalize the Communist Party, in December 1976 the Prime Minister assured Ramon Trias Fargas, a Catalan nationalist, leader of the then still illegal Esquerra Democràtica de Catalunya, that ‘he couldn’t put the democratization in danger for a detail like negotiating with a Communist’ (Jordi Amat, El laberint de la llibertat Vida de Ramon Trias Fargas, Barcelona, La Magrana, 2009, p. 317); in January 1977, when a commission of parties of the democratic opposition met with Suárez to tackle the legalization of the political parties, the Prime Minister refused to discuss that of the PCE (Sartorius and Sabio, El final de la dictadura, p. 765); and still in the middle of February, according to Salvador Sánchez-Terán — at that time the civil governor of Barcelona and a few months later adviser to the Prime Minister — ‘the unofficial thesis [. .] was that the legalization of the PCE could not be dealt with by the Suárez government and should be reserved for the first democratic Cortes; which implied that the PCE could not stand as such at the general elections’; see Sánchez-Terán, Memorias. De Franco a la Generalitat, Barcelona, Planeta, 1988, p. 248.

‘The scene [. .] could have happened like this. .’ See for example the account by Pardo Zancada (23-F. La pieza que falta, pp. 71–73), who attended General Ortín’s funeral.

Gutiérrez Mellado is quoted in Puell de la Villa, Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado, p. 202; or see the audio-visual report by Victoria Prego, ‘Asalto a la democracia’, in El camino de la libertad, Barcelona, Planeta/De Agostini, 2008.

Gutiérrez Mellado’s quote is in José Oneto, Los últimos días de un presidente. De la dimisión al golpe de estado, Barcelona, Planeta, 1981, p. 152. Josep Melià tells the story in a rather different way in Así cayó Adolfo Suárez, p. 111. The anecdote about Suárez and Gutiérrez Mellado was recalled by the former on various radio and television programmes. See the Radio Nacional de España document, Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado. La cara militar de la Transición, June 2006, quoted by Manuel de Ramón, Los generales que salvaron la democracia, Madrid, Espejo de Tinta, 2007, p. 62.

‘His physical health was not bad. .’ After Suárez’s resignation there was much speculation about his health problems, to which some attributed part of the responsibility for it, or at least for his paralysis during the autumn and winter of 1980. The speculation lacked any foundation: Suárez did not have health problems at that time, although he did during the previous autumn, when he suffered excruciating headaches for two months and had to be treated by doctors for several hours a day, until they discovered that he did not have a brain tumour but rather a simple dental problem. Suárez himself tells this in his interview with Sol Alameda; Santos Juliá et al, eds., Memoria de la transición, p. 459. See also ‘La buena salud del presidente Suárez’, in Justino Sinova, ed., Historia de la transición, vol. II, pp. 648–649.

11. Josefina Martínez, ABC, 27.9.2007.

The King is quoted in the extract of El Príncipe y el Rey, by José García Abad, published in El Siglo, no. 781, 31 March 2008.

The text of the King’s speech is in Juan Carlos I, Discursos. 1975–1995, Madrid, Departamento de Publicaciones del Congreso de los Deputados y el Senado, 1996, pp. 280–281.

‘. . according to some sources. .’ See Charles Powell, Juan Carlos, un rey para la democracia, Barcelona, Ariel/Planeta, Barcelona, 1995, pp. 278–279. A sentence from a UCD leader could endorse this version of what happened between the King and Suárez on 4 January at La Pleta: ‘It seems that anyone who could hear heard on Sunday the 25th [of January] a royal commentary: “Arias was a gentleman: when I hinted that his resignation might be needed, he handed it to me”’; Emilio Attard, Vida y muerte de UCD, p. 189.

The text of Suárez’s resignation speech is in Adolfo Suárez, Fue posible la concordia, pp. 262–266; on the way it was written, see Josep Melià — who was in charge of preparing the first draft — Así cayó Adolfo Suárez, pp. 94–96; and also Fernández López, Sabino Fernández Campo, p. 136.

Footnote. Suárez explains the reasons for his support for González at the PSOE’s 28th Party congress in the interview with Sol Alameda; see Santos Juliá et al, eds., Memoria de la transición, p. 460. See also, in the same book, the essay by Juliá, Los socialistas en la política española, 1879–1982, p. 535.

‘. . as he himself had said to a journalist. .’ See Victoria Prego, Adolfo Suárez. La apuesta del Rey (1976–1981), Madrid, Unidad Editorial, 2002, p. 28.

‘. . CESID as an agency contributed to the failure of the coup d’état. .’ In reality, the unfounded rumour that Javier Calderón organized the coup as the head of CESID did not start in 1981 but fifteen years later. The story is interesting. In 1996, after more than a decade away from the agency, Calderón returned to CESID as its director general and, as the result of a restructuring he imposed, several dozen people were dismissed. Among them was Diego Camacho López-Escobar. Camacho decided that his expulsion was not due to his professional incompetence, his unstable personality or the shared opinion of the majority of his commanding officers in CESID that he should not continue with the agency, but rather to a punishment by Calderón for his attitude following 23 February, when, as a captain in AOME under the orders of Cortina, he denounced his immediate superior to Calderón for his alleged participation in the coup: expelling him from CESID fifteen years later, Calderón would be getting revenge for the problems that the accusations against his subordinate caused him after the coup, implicating members of the service in it. It is not easy to believe Camacho’s version: I’ve already said that because of the coup Calderón expelled Cortina from CESID — as with all the others suspected of having acted in favour of the rebels — but not Camacho or any of the other agents who informed on the golpista actions inside the agency, who carried on working there over the following years (one of them was also dismissed with Camacho in 1996, but at least one other was not); on the other hand, after the coup Camacho and Calderón maintained a strong friendship over the course of fourteen years that had begun before the coup, when Calderón introduced Camacho as an officer to be trusted first into CESID and later AOME; furthermore (or especially), although after the coup Camacho denounced Cortina, not then or any other time over the intervening fourteen years did he denounce Calderón: he never said Calderón had participated in the coup, much less that he’d organized it. Be that as it may, after his dismissal from the intelligence service Camacho was disciplined and arrested for making statements to the press contrary to his oath, and from that moment on his military career was cut short. That was when he began to claim that Calderón and CESID had designed and executed the 23 February coup, an accusation that a little while later inspired the book by Jesús Palacios, 23-F: El golpe del CESID.

‘. . Sabino Fernández Campo, in theory the third authority in the Royal Household. .’ The first authority was General Nicolás Cotoner y Cotoner, Marquis of Mondéjar; the second, commander of the Military Chamber, General Joaquín de Valenzuela. The operation of the Household and the powers of each of the authorities that run it are explained in detail in Javier Cremades, La casa de S.M. el Rey, Madrid, Civitas, 1998, pp. 61–105.

‘. . Quintana Lacaci is an unwavering Francoist. .’ A few days after the failure of the 23 February coup General Quintana Lacaci told the new Minister of Defence, Alberto Oliart, at the first meeting they held: ‘Minister, before I sit down I must tell you that I am a Francoist, that I adore the memory of General Franco. For eight years I served as a colonel in his personal guard. I wear this military medal that I won in Russia. I fought in the Civil War. So you can well imagine my way of thinking. But the Caudillo gave me the order to obey his successor and the King ordered me to stop the coup on 23 February. If he had ordered me to assault the Cortes, I would have done so.’ See Paul Preston, Juan Carlos. A People’s King, p. 485.

Part Three. A Revolutionary Confronts the Coup

‘. . he was Secretary General of the Communist Party. .’ See Santiago Carrillo, Memorias, p. 712.

Max Weber, ‘Politics as a vocation’, Essays in Sociology, p. 160.

Fernando Claudín, Santiago Carrillo, p. 303.

Suárez is quoted in Sánchez Navarro, La transición española en sus documentos, p. 288; Carrillo, in ‘Tras la inevitable caída. .’, Mundo Obrero, 7.7.1976.

‘According to his then closest collaborators. .’ See for example Alfonso Osorio, Trayectoria de un ministro de la Corona, p. 277, or Rodolfo Martín Villa, Al servicio del Estado, Barcelona, Planeta, 1984, p. 62. Perhaps it is Salvador Sánchez-Terán who best sums up the opinion of Suárez’s circle on the behaviour of the Communists in reaction to the Atocha murders: ‘The PCE won in a few hours — and by the blood of their men — more democratic respectability than in all their demands for restoration of liberties carried out during the entire transition’; La Transición. Síntesis y claves, Barcelona, Planeta, 2008, pp. 157–158.

The most extensive version I know of the meeting between Suárez and Carrillo — a version the protagonists themselves have approved — is found in Joaquín Bardavío, Sábado Santo rojo, Madrid, Ediciones Uve, 1980, pp. 155–171. Carrillo has also described it at length in Juez y parte. 15 retratos españoles, Barcelona, Plaza y Janés, 1995, pp. 218–223. Otherwise, shortly after the conversation took place Carrillo told Manuel Azcárate that in the course of it Suárez had told him: ‘In this country there are two politicians: you and me’; Manuel Azcárate, Crisis del eurocomunismo, Barcelona, Argos-Vergara, 1982, p. 247. As for the change in public opinion in favour of the legalization of the PCE, it was in fact spectacularly fast; see the opinion polls in Tusell, La transición a la democracia, p. 116.

Carrillo’s first quote is in Prego, Así se hizo la transición, p. 656; the second, in Morán, Miseria y grandeza del partido comunista de España. 1939–1985, p. 542, which is for the most part where I got the description of what happened in the meeting on Calle Capitán Haya: it is Morán himself who claims that the paper read by Carrillo was written by Suárez. But see also Prego, Así se hizo la transición, pp. 663–667.

Le Monde, 22.10.1977. Quoted by Fernando Claudín, Santiago Carrillo, p. 279.

Time, 21.11.1977.

Carrillo is quoted in Carlos Abella, Adolfo Suárez, p. 455.

Carrillo, Memorias, p. 712.

Footnote. It should be said that in his memoirs Guerra regrets having said this — in September 1979, during an extraordinary PSOE conference; see Cuando el tiempo nos alcanza, pp. 274–275.

Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, trans. Daniel De Leon, Chicago, Charles H. Kerr, 1907, p. 5.

Nicolás Estévanez, Fragmentos de mis memorias, Madrid, Tipográfico de los Hijos de R. Álvarez, 1903, p. 460.

Santiago Carrillo, Memorias, pp. 712–716. What happened in the clock room is also reconstructed by Alfonso Guerra, in Cuando el tiempo nos alcanza, pp. 297–301.

Santiago Carrillo interviewed by María Antonia Iglesias, El País semanal, 9.1.2005. The quote from El Socialista is in Fernando Claudín, Santiago Carrillo, p. 19.

Ian Gibson, Paracuellos: cómo fue, Madrid, Temas de Hoy, 1983; Jorge M. Reverte, La batalla de Madrid, Barcelona, Crítica, 2004, pp. 673–679, where the minutes of the meeting between the Communists and anarchists, during which the executions of Paracuellos were planned, are reproduced; and Ángel Viñas, El escudo de la República. El oro de España, la apuesta soviética y los hechos de mayo de 1937, Barcelona, Crítica, 2007, pp. 35–78.

‘. . the order might have come from Alexander Orlov. .’ Antonio Elorza claims the order did not come from Orlov, and that ‘it could only have been issued by the delegate of the Communist International in Spain’, Victorio Codovilla; ‘Codovilla en Paracuellos’, El País, 1.11.2008. Carrillo is quoted in Gibson, Paracuellos, p. 229.

Carrillo is quoted in Diario 16, 16.3.1981.

Carrillo is quoted in José García Abad, Adolfo Suárez, p. 22.

M. Vázquez Montalbán, ‘José Luis Cortina Prieto. Cocido madrileño nocturno’, in Mis almuerzos con gente inquietante, Barcelona, Planeta, 1984, p. 91. ‘. . he participated in GODSA. .’ In fact, GODSA was the culmination of a study group called Team XXI founded by Antonio and José Luis Cortina in the late 1960s and which, in many articles published in magazines at the time, expressed the at once radical and tame Falangism of both brothers. For more on Team XXI, see Jeroen Oskam, Interferencias entre política y literatura bajo el franquismo, Amsterdam, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1992, pp. 215, 226–234, among others; on GODSA, see Cristina Palomares, Sobrevivir después de Franco, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 2006, pp. 198–205.

‘. . the most plausible are the following. .’ My account fundamentally follows that of Fernández López, in Diecisiete horas y media, pp. 133–134. Tejero’s words are quoted by Aramburu in Manuel de Ramón, Los generales que salvaron la democracia, p. 99, where one can also read the version offered of the confrontation between Aramburu and Tejero by Aramburu himself and one of Tejero’s Civil Guards. ‘. . the Cortes was filled with the rarefied air. .’ What happened in the Parliament during the evening and night of the 23rd and the morning of the 24th is described in a report commissioned by the President of the Chamber, written by his secretaries — Víctor Carrascal, Leopoldo Torres, Soledad Becerril and José Bono — and sent to the investigating magistrate; it is dated 15 March 1981, consists of thirty-five pages and includes several appendices where the damages caused to the Cortes by the assault are specified right down to the consumption of alcohol — including nineteen bottles of champagne, four of which were Moët Chandon — food and tobacco in the bar. Part of my account comes from this source.

‘. . circulating in a fragmentary and confused way as well was the news picked up secretly from a transistor radio by former Deputy Prime Minister Fernando Abril Martorell. .’ According to El País (25.2.1981), there was another transistor radio in the Cortes, belonging to the UCD deputy Enrique Sánchez de León; according to José Oneto (La noche de Tejero, Barcelona, Planeta, 1981, p. 123), the radio Abril Martorell was listening to belonged to Julen Guimon, also a UCD deputy.

Part Four. All the Coups of the Coup

Fernández López summarizes some of the hypotheses around the military authority awaited in the Cortes in Diecisiete horas y media, pp. 218–223. Suárez’s statement was picked up by Agencia EFE on 16 September 1988. See Juan Blanco, 23-F. Crónica fiel. ., p. 42.

The anecdote about General Sanjurjo comes from Pardo Zancada, 23-F. La pieza que falta, p. 160. Calvo Sotelo is quoted in Victoria Prego, ‘Dos barajas para un golpe’, El Mundo, 4.7.2008. Not long after the coup the journalist Emilio Romero — very close to the golpistas — expressed an identical opinion to that which Calvo Sotelo would give years later, in ‘De la radio a la prensa’, prologue to La noche de los transistores, by Rosa Villacastín and María Beneyto, Madrid, San Martín, 1981, p. 7. On the other hand, the supposed civilian plot was denounced very quickly in Todos al suelo: la conspiración y el golpe, Madrid, Punto Crítico, 1981, by Ricardo Cid Cañaveral and other journalists, which led those accused to bring a lawsuit against them; some of those journalists have since retracted their accusations (see Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez, 23-F. La conjura de los necios, pp. 225–228). If one has a lot of time, see Juan Pla, La trama civil del golpe, Barcelona, Planeta, 1982. Footnote See Fernández López, Diecisiete horas y media, pp. 73–75.

Alfonso Armada, Al servicio de la Corona, p. 149 and p. 146.

Milans del Bosch is quoted in Gabriel Cardona, Los Milans del Bosch, Barcelona, Edhasa, 2005, pp. 340–341. Milans’ antagonism towards Gutiérrez Mellado was made public after the coup in a letter published by El Alcázar (28.8.1981), in which, after claiming that the only adjective that applies to the former Deputy Prime Minister is ‘despicable’ and before calling him a coward and a traitor, he says among other things: ‘No one can receive lessons in military ethics from you, for the simple reason that you do not know them. I’d like to think you are mad, which would justify your very frequent and hysterical reactions. .’

Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, God & gun. Apuntes de polemología, Barcelona, Destino, 2008, p. 273. The anecdote about Tejero and the corpse of the murdered Civil Guard was recounted by José Luis Martín Prieto in one of his articles reporting on the 23 February trial; see Técnica de un golpe de estado, p. 269.

El Imparcial, 31.8.1978.

Gutiérrez Mellado, Un soldado de España, p. 32.

The report sent by Armada to the Zarzuela is usually attributed to a professor of constitutional law; but, according to Fernández López, it was most likely prepared by a professor of administrative law; Fernández López proposes a name: Laureano López Rodó. See Diecisiete horas y media, pp. 71–73; and, by the same author, Sabino Fernández Campo, pp. 131–132. That the report left the Zarzuela and circulated around the Madrid political village is confirmed by Emilio Romero, in Tragicomedia de España, Barcelona, Planeta, 1985, p. 275.

Suárez is quoted in, for example, Abella, Adolfo Suárez, p. 437.

‘. . and while murmurs circulated in Madrid. .’ On the rumours that a group of Captains General demanded the King force Suárez to resign, see Pardo Zancada, 23-F. La pieza que falta, p. 185; on the rumours about the no-confidence motion, see note ‘. . some leaders of political parties were flocking to the Zarzuela. .’ See Manuel Fraga’s lengthy account of his conversation with the King on 24 November, in En busca del tiempo servido, beginning on p. 223. Felipe González visits the Zarzuela at the beginning of December; see for example Antonio Navalón and Francisco Guerrero, Objetivo Adolfo Suárez, Madrid, Espasa Calpe, 1987, p. 183. As for the King’s speech, it is not superfluous to recall that in his memoirs Armada claims that the King showed him a draft of it on 18 December, at the Zarzuela; see Al servicio de la Corona, p. 225.

‘Although we have only Armada’s testimony about what was discussed in those conversations with the King. .’ See Palacios, El golpe del CESID, pp. 282–286, where Armada’s recollections are recorded. See also the version offered by Fernández López, Diecisiete horas y media, p. 75, and, on Armada’s dinner with the monarch mentioned on pp. 260–261, see pp. 92–93.

‘. . the newspapers were full of hypotheses of coalition or caretaker or unity governments. .’ As well as the articles already cited, see for example Josep Tarradellas’ statements, published 1 February, picked up by Europe Press and quoted by Palacios, 23-F: El golpe del CESID, p. 323; or the article by Fernando Reinlein in Diario 16, 2.2.1981. ‘. . there’s no reason to rule out that he might have had doubts. .’ Manuel Fraga also had the impression at the time that the King was having doubts; on Friday 30 January, the day after Suárez’s resignation, he wrote in his diary: ‘The King immediately opened constitutional consultations; I had the feeling he was not in a hurry, that he was not taking anything for granted, and that this time the consultations were not a mere formality.’ Further on he adds: ‘On the 31st the King decided, with good judgement, not to propose a candidate until the UCD crisis was resolved and (without saying so) to allow time for contacts between the political groups’; En busca del tiempo servido, pp. 230–231. Fraga also notes that on 1 February the King postponed a planned trip to the United States. As for the possibility of forming governments of various parties as a solution to the political crisis, the parties themselves discussed it publicly and all the newspapers reported it.

‘. . according to Armada, he also told him of an imminent military move. .’ See Armada’s statements collected by Jesús Palacios, in VV.AA, El camino de la libertad (1978–2008), vol. IV, Madrid, Unidad Editorial, 2008, p. 10, where the former royal secretary also claims to have told Gutiérrez Mellado about a coup; we don’t know if, according to Armada, he gave the general the names of the golpistas: astonishingly, in 2001 he claimed he did not ‘because that seemed to me a lack of loyalty’; see Cuenca Toribio, 23-F. Conversaciones con Alfonso Armada, p. 99. For his part, Gutiérrez Mellado declared before the examining magistrate concerning his conversation with Armada: ‘When I told him my obsession was the permanent union of the Armies, General Armada answered me ironically, as I was later able to realize, that I should rest easy, because the Army was very united’. Quoted by Pilar Urbano, Con la venia. ., p. 37.

The journalist who covered the trial — who is quoting an observation of Agatha Christie’s — is Pilar Urbano, Con la venia. ., p. 108. The version the trial gave of the preambles to the coup can be read in the sentence of the court martial: see for example Martín Prieto, Técnica de un golpe de estado, beginning on p. 335; Tejero’s version can be read in his declaration to the prosecutor, published by Merino in Tejero. 25 años después, beginning on p. 163.

‘There is a theory that has enjoyed a certain renown. .’ It is defended by, for example Pilar Urbano in Con la venia. ., p. 306.

Niccolò Machiavelli, De principatibus, ed. Giorgio Inglese, Roma, Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1994, p. 286.

‘In spite of the hermetic character of AOME. .’ The declarations before the magistrate by Sergeant Rando Parra and Captain Rubio Luengo — members of Cortina’s unit — can be read in Juan Blanco, 23-F. Crónica fiel. ., pp. 487–494. Two versions of the so-called Jáudenes Report — containing the declarations about the alleged participation in the coup by various members of AOME — can be found in Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez, 23-F. La conjura de los necios, pp. 309–327, and in Perote, 23-F: Ni Milans ni Tejero, pp. 253–270. Javier Calderón and Florentino Ruiz Platero discuss these testimonies in detail in Algo más que el 23-F, pp. 165–188.

Footnote. For information on Operación Mister see Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante, pp. 223–232, and Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez, 23-F. La conjura de los necios, pp. 176–186.

Footnote. The AOME member is Captain Diego Camacho; Jesús Palacios develops this thesis in 23-F: El coup del CESID, pp. 230–231.

‘. . it’s very likely [. .] that in the days before the coup Cortina turned into a sort of adjutant of Armada’s. .’ Some authors maintain that it was Cortina who personally informed the US Ambassador and Papal nuncio of the imminence of the coup; see Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez, 23-F. La conjura de los necios, pp. 191–198, or Palacios, 23-F: El golpe del CESID, pp. 344–347.

‘As I reconstruct it or imagine it. .’ The version that Tejero gives of the conversation can be read in Merino, Tejero. 25 años después, pp. 232–236; that of Armada, in Al servicio de la Corona, pp. 242–243, and, in more detail, in Cuenca Toribio, Conversaciones con Alfonso Armada, pp. 84–90. There are credible reconstructions of what happened in Fernández López, Diecisiete horas y media, pp. 161–165; Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante, pp. 182–187; Pardo Zancada, 23-F. La pieza que falta, pp. 296–300; Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez, 23-F. La conjura de los necios, pp. 152–159; or Palacios, 23-F: El golpe del CESID, pp. 410–415.

Footnote. Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante, pp. 185–186. Dr Echave’s testimony can be seen in the television report El 23-F desde dentro, directed by Joan Úbeda, produced in 2001 and given away with the newspaper Público, 23 February 2009. Juan de Arespacochaga is one of the people who claim to have had news of Armada’s government before the coup; a government in which, as he guessed from the start, ‘the person I most respect politically as do millions of Spaniards’ (he is undoubtedly referring to Manuel Fraga) would figure and, along with him ‘two more members of the commission that wrote the Constitution’; he also claims that a list of the prospective Cabinet was later circulated that included himself and other ‘personal exponents of service to Spain above parties and factions’. See Carta a unos capitanes, pp. 274–275.

Those who advance the theory of a deliberate delay in the broadcast of the royal message — though attributing it to different reasons and drawing different conclusions — go from Pedro de Silva (Las fuerzas del cambio, Barcelona, Prensa Ibérica, 1996, p. 204) to Amadeo Martínez Inglés (23-F. El golpe que nunca existió, Madrid, Foca, 2001, pp. 145–148), by way of Ricardo de la Cierva (El 23-F sin máscaras, Madrid, Fénix, 1999, p. 226).

The King’s message is in, for example, Fernández López, Diecisiete horas y media, p. 166; as well as in Paul Preston, Juan Carlos: A People’s King, pp. 481–482.

Part Five. Viva Italia!

Adolfo Suárez, ‘Yo disiento’, El País, 4.6.1982.

The dialogue between Suárez and General de Santiago is taken from Victoria Prego, Diccionario de la transición, p. 557. The incident between Suárez and Tejero is mentioned by, among others, Urbano, Con la venia. ., p. 183, and Charles Powell, Adolfo Suárez, p. 180; José Oneto recreates it novelistically in La noche de Tejero, p. 195.

The anecdote of what happened during the National Defence Council meeting is told in Charles Powell, Adolfo Suárez, p. 181.

José Ortega y Gasset, Mirabeau o el político, in Obras completas, vol. IV, Madrid, Taurus, 2005, pp. 195–223.

Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality, London, Chatto & Windus, 1996, p. 32. Paris Match, 28.8.1976, quoted by García Abad, Adolfo Suárez, p. 354.

‘Some of Suárez’s apologists. .’ I’m referring to, for example, Josep Melià, who in La trama de los escribanos del agua, pp. 49–56, recounts Suárez’s early days in Madrid; in the same book, p. 49, he also tells the anecdote about Suárez with the father of his future wife.

See Gregorio Morán, Adolfo Suárez, from p. 105.

Franco’s comment to his personal physician, Vicente Pozuelo, does not come from his own book, Los 476 días de Franco, Barcelona, Planeta, 1980, but rather that of Luis Herrero, El ocaso del régimen, Madrid, Temas de Hoy, 1995, in whom Pozuelo confided it. Herrero claims Franco’s opinion ‘was perhaps due to the fact that not long before the intelligence services had delivered to El Pardo a copy of the notes that Suárez — like many other young politicians of the regime — had sent to the Zarzuela summarizing his points of view on the pending political transition’.

The King’s comment is from July 1972, and the person who heard him say it was his biographer, José Luis Navas; see García Abad, Adolfo Suárez, p. 70.

Suárez is quoted in Morán, Adolfo Suárez, p. 261. [Puerta de Hierro is one of Madrid’s most exclusive neighbourhoods and the Colegio Nuestra Señora del Pilar is one of its best schools, with a long list of prominent alumni.]

Suárez’s account can be read in Victoria Prego, Adolfo Suárez, pp. 26–27; Luis Herrero gives more details about the same episode in Los que le llamábamos Adolfo, pp. 135–138.

The cartoon by Forges was in Cambio 16, 12–18 July 1976, p. 18. The quote from Le Figaro, in Sánchez Navarro, La transición española en sus documentos, p. 287. The quote from El País, from the article ‘Nombres para una crisis’, 6 July 1976.

Machiavelli, De principatibus, p. 289. Suárez is quoted in Sánchez Navarro, La transición española en sus documentos, p. 288. The second Suárez quote, Adolfo Suárez, Fue posible la concordia, p. 26.

[Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey (literally ‘Warriors of Christ the King’) was a paramilitary group that operated in the late 1970s.]

Miguel Primo de Rivera is quoted in Sánchez Navarro, La transición española en sus documentos, p. 355. As well as Primo de Rivera, the Law for Political Reform was defended in the Cortes by Fernando Suárez — who steered the proposal through — Noel Zapico, Belén Landábury and Lorenzo Olarte.

The New York Times and Le Monde headlines from 19 November 1976 are quoted in Abella, Adolfo Suárez, p. 149.

‘. . he declared himself a Social Democrat to his former Deputy Prime Minister. .’ See Alfonso Osorio, Trayectoria de un ministro de la Corona, pp. 327–328. The anecdote about the argument over which part of the chamber the UCD deputies should occupy is recounted in Martín Villa, Al servicio del Estado, p. 82, and Herrero de Miñón, Memorias de estío, p. 208.

The editorial ran under the headline ‘Desorden autonómico, desorden partidario’, El País, 30 December 1980.

For Rossellini’s opinion of General Della Rovere, see Ángel Quintana, Roberto Rossellini, Madrid, Cátedra, 1995, p. 187. ‘It is reasonable to surmise that any of the young Francoist politicians [. .] could have done what Suárez did. .’ One of those young politicians, Alfonso Osorio, admitted in 2006: ‘In order to carry out the political transition [. .] someone was needed who had sufficient intelligence, adequate knowledge, capacity for dialogue, infinite patience, exquisite manners and overwhelming sympathy, and none of us politicians in 1976 had all those qualities together [. .] We had more than enough presumptuousness, arrogance, elitism and prejudices: precisely what Adolfo Suárez didn’t have’, ‘Prologue’ to Manuel Ortiz, Adolfo Suárez y el bienio prodigioso, Barcelona, Planeta, 2006, p. 20.

Michel de Montaigne, ‘Of Utility and Honesty’, Essays of Montaigne, vol. 7, trans. Charles Cotton, revised by William Carew Hazlett, New York, Edwin C. Hill, 1910, p. 1181. Max Weber, ‘Politics as a vocation’, Essays in Sociology, p. 164.

See Adolfo Suárez, Fue posible la concordia, p. 331. The anecdote about the safe in Suárez’s office comes from Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, Memoria viva de la transición, pp. 187–188.

‘. . as he told the journalists. .’ See Adolfo Suárez, Fue posible la concordia, p. 359.

See Adolfo Suárez, Fue posible la concordia, p. 293.

Fraga’s words were addressed to Ricardo de la Cierva, who reproduces them in La derecha sin remedio, Barcelona, Plaza y Janés, 1987, p. 391.

The anecdote about Suárez and Hernández Mancha is told by, for example, José Díaz Herrera and Isabel Durán, in Aznar. La vida desconocida de un presidente, Barcelona, Planeta, 1999, pp. 373–374.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, ‘Europe in Ruins’, Granta 33, p. 138. Adolfo Suárez, ‘El amor y la experiencia del dolor’, prologue to Mariam Suárez, Diagnóstico: cáncer, Barcelona, Debolsillo/Galaxia Gutemberg, 2005, p. 13.

There is an account of Suárez’s last public appearance in Luis Herrero, Los que le llamábamos Adolfo, pp. 297–298.

‘. . it was Lieutenant Colonel Tejero’s fault that he was prosecuted. .’ Tejero’s various declarations before the judge on Cortina’s implication are examined by Calderón and Ruiz Platero in Algo más que el 23-F, pp. 166–171. For information on the Jáudenes Report, see the note to p. 295. The contradictory versions of Rando Parra and Rubio Luengo, on the one hand, and Cortina, on the other, are also in Palacios, El coup del CESID, pp. 31–58, where abundant information on what happened within AOME after the coup can be found.

Santa Pau Corzán is quoted in Pardo Zancada, 23-F. La pieza que falta, p. 324.

The text of the conditions of capitulation of those who assaulted the Cortes, the so-called ‘Pacto del capó’, can be read in the documentary appendix included in the book by Pardo Zancada, 23-F. La pieza que falta, p. 425. (Pardo Zancada is the one who claims, by the way, that the surrender pact was signed ‘on the roof’ of one of his vehicles, and not, as Lieutenant Colonel Fuentes tends to say and to repeat — see El pacto del capó, p. 135– on the hood.) See also there (beginning on p. 412) the manifesto drawn up by the occupiers of the Cortes and sent to the press, the text of the final telex sent by the Zarzuela to Milans, and Milans’ edict annulling the edict that declared the state of emergency in Valencia or the message the Zarzuela sent to Pardo Zancada by way of San Martín to gain his surrender.

Epilogue: Prologue to a Novel

Martín Prieto, Técnica de un golpe de estado, p. 387. The articles collected in Martín Prieto’s book form an excellent account of what happened during the trial. See also the previously mentioned book by Milans’ defence lawyer, Santiago Segura, written in collaboration with the journalist Julio Merino, Jaque al Rey; and those by José Oneto, La verdad sobre el caso Tejero, and Manuel Rubio, 23-F. El proceso, as well as the account by Urbano in Con la venia. ., pp. 311–357. ‘Less than a year later the final court. .’ On the appeals and final sentences of the Supreme Court, see Fernández López, Diecisiete horas y media, pp. 195–198.

‘The coup d’état reinforced the Crown. .’ See Santos Juliá, ‘El poder del Rey’, El País, 17.11.2007.

‘. . 23 February brought an end to the war.’ The final date of the transition is a matter of dispute. In general, it tends to be said that democracy was consolidated in October 1982, with the Socialists coming to power, but Linz and Stepan — whose thesis is that a democracy has taken root when it becomes ‘the only game in town’ — consider that perhaps the key date is 23 February, or more precisely the moment of the imprisonment of General Milans del Bosch and Lieutenant Colonel Tejero when ‘there was never a politically significant movement in the military or in civil society to grant them clemency’; Problems of democratic transition and consolidation, pp. 108–110.

The bullfighter is Rafael de Paula, interviewed by Miguel Mora in El País, 31.3.2006; and the poet is José Bergamín, interviewed by Gonzalo Suárez, in La suela de mis zapatos, Barcelona, Seix Barral, 2006, p. 207. Alan Pauls, El factor Borges, Barcelona, Anagrama, 2004, p. 42.

Juan J. Linz, ‘La transición española en perspectiva comparada’, in J. Tusell and Álvaro Soto, eds., Historia de la transición, p. 21. Footnote. Odo Marquard, Filosofía de la compensación: estudios sobre antropología filosófica, Barcelona, Paidós, 2001, p. 41.