Those were the civilian and military operations under way; the report then went on to consider the mixed civilian-military operation. This turns out to be a soft coup aimed at averting the risk of the three hard coups just described; its proponents are a group of unaffiliated civilians with political experience and a group of serving generals, ‘with brilliant records and potential appeal’; the mechanism of implementation is formally constitutional, ‘although such formality went no further than covering the minimal legal appearances to avoid the classification as a coup’: it would consist of forcing Suárez’s resignation through a continuous series of pressures from different directions (political parties, financial, business, ecclesiastic, military and journalistic means) which would culminate with pressure from the King, who would immediately propose, with the support of the main parties, a general ‘with the backing of the rest of the military structure’ as Prime Minister, who would form a ‘caretaker government’ or a ‘government of national salvation’ at least fifty per cent of which would comprise independent civilians or nominations by the UCD, PSOE and Alianza Popular. As well as eliminating terrorism and reviving the economy, this government — whose mandate would end the legislature in principle — would reform the Constitution, do away with the autonomous governments, reduce the power of the parties and make the Communist and nationalist ones illegal. It did not aim in principle to destroy democracy: it aimed to trim or restrict or shrink it and turn it into a semi-democracy. According to the report, this mixed operation not only counted on the support of leaders in the UCD and the PSOE, who would have been convinced that it was the only alternative to a hard coup; it was also seeking the approval of the proponents of the military operations, assuring them that, if the mixed option failed, the field could be cleared for their attempt (‘in which they would find the same collaboration they’d lent to this one’). The report concluded with the claim: ‘The viability of this operation is very high’; a date was even ventured: ‘It is estimated that its period of implementation could culminate before the spring of 1981 (barring imponderables).’
This is a synopsis of the contents of the ‘Panorama of Operations Under Way’. In the end there were imponderables, but not too many: fundamentally the news the report offered was exact; its predictions as welclass="underline" after all the 23 February coup turned out to be an improvised attempt to put into practice the civilian-military operation under the cover of the four civilian operations and with the support of the three military operations; or spelled out with all the names: a failed attempt to hand power to General Armada using the force of the military plotters — Milans del Bosch’s lieutenant generals, San Martín’s colonels and Tejero’s impromptus — to oblige the civilian plotters — the UCD, Alianza Popular and the PSOE — to accept this emergency solution. So, if it’s true that CESID prepared this report, there is no doubt — although not knowing exactly the who, the when, the how and the where of the coup — the intelligence service possessed in November 1980 information so reliable on the coup d’état conspiracies that it was able to predict without much margin of error what would end up happening on 23 February. It so happens, however, despite usually being attributed to CESID, the report is not the work of CESID: its author is Manuel Fernández-Monzón Altolaguirre, then a lieutenant colonel in the Army and head of the Ministry of Defence press office. Fernández-Monzón was a former member of the intelligence service who maintained many connections among his former colleagues and who for years sold politico-military reports to a select clientele of Madrid politicians, bankers and businessmen, as well as being at the time adviser to Luis María Anson in the news agency EFE. His report — which was sent to the Minister of Defence and indeed reached the King, the Prime Minister and his Deputy Prime Minister, and undoubtedly circulated around the political village of Madrid in the autumn and winter of 1980 — constitutes an apt summary of the seething swarm of plots on the eve of 23 February, especially the military plots. Although some of it was in the public domain, most of the news the report contained came from CESID, which demonstrates that the intelligence service knew the general design of operations under way, but did not know exactly, in the days before the attempted military coup, the who, the when, the how and the where of it. Did they know? Did CESID fail in its mission to inform and warn the government? Or did it not fail but not warn the government because it was on the side of the rebels? The most controversial question about 23 February still stands for the moment: did CESID participate in the coup d’état?
Chapter 11. 23 February
It was a Monday. A sunny day dawned in Madrid; towards half past one in the afternoon the sun stopped shining and gusts of winter wind swept the streets of the city centre; by half past six it was already getting dark. Just at that time — at twenty-three minutes past six to be more precise — Lieutenant Colonel Tejero entered the Cortes in command of an improvised troop made up of sixteen officers and a hundred and seventy NCOs and soldiers recruited from the Civil Guard Motor Pool, on Calle Príncipe de Vergara. It was the beginning of the coup. A coup whose elemental design did not correspond to the design of a hard coup but rather a soft coup, that is to the design of a bloodless coup that should only brandish the threat of weapons enough so that the King, the political class and the citizenry will bend to the will of the golpistas: after the Parliament was taken, the Captain General of Valencia, General Milans del Bosch, would declare martial law in his region and occupy its capital, Colonel San Martín and some officers of the Brunete Armoured Division would persuade their unit into rebellion and occupy Madrid, and General Armada would go to the Zarzuela and convince the King that, with the aim of solving the problem created by the rebellious military officers, he should allow him to go in his name to the Cortes to liberate the parliamentarian hostages and in exchange to form with the main political parties a coalition or caretaker or unity government under his premiership. Those four tactical movements corresponded to a certain extent to the four military operations announced in November by Fernández-Monzón’s report: the taking of the Cortes, which was the most complicated movement (and the trigger), corresponded to the operation of the impromptus; the taking of Valencia, which was the most well-prepared movement, corresponded to the lieutenant generals’ operation; the taking of Madrid, which was the most improvised movement, corresponded to the colonels’ operation; and the taking of the Zarzuela, which was the simplest (and most essential) movement, corresponded to the civilian-military operation. There was nevertheless an extremely important difference between the coup as Fernández-Monzón’s report predicted it and the coup as it happened in reality: while in the first case the civilian-military operation functioned as the political means with which to prevent the three military operations, in the second case the three military operations functioned as the means of force with which to impose the civilian-military operation. Furthermore, although the design of the coup might be simple, its execution was not or certain aspects of its execution were not, but on the morning of 23 February few golpistas harboured doubts about its success: all or almost all thought that not only the Army but the King, the political class and a large part of the public were predisposed to accept the victory of the coup; all or almost all thought the entire country would welcome the coup with more relief than resignation, if not with fervour. I put forward one piece of information: agents of CESID took part in two of the four movements of the coup; and another: at least in one of those movements its intervention was not trivial.