The King and Armada spoke by telephone just after the King spoke to Milans and to Quintana Lacaci, but it wasn’t Armada who phoned the King but rather the King who, just as the golpistas had anticipated (or just as Armada had anticipated), called Armada. That he should have done so, as he’d called Milans and Quintana Lacaci, is logicaclass="underline" Armada is at Army General Headquarters, in the Buenavista Palace, and the King calls there because he wants to keep the leadership of the military under control and find out any news they have there; although maybe that’s not the only reason he calls him, maybe he’s not just looking for power and information: since he’s alarmed, since he knows it’s a coup but doesn’t know if it’s with him or against him and perhaps cannot think of anything except preserving the Crown that had cost him years of effort to obtain, in those instants of panic and uncertainty the King is maybe also (or above all) seeking protection. Armada can provide all three of these things. Or at least it’s logical that the King might think they can be supplied by Armada, his former tutor, his secretary for so long, the man who spent years getting him out of so many tight spots and was at his side during the difficult time of the restoration of the monarchy, the man whom, giving way to Adolfo Suárez’s pressures, he’d expelled from his eternal post in the Royal Household less than five years ago and to whom, since he’s wanted to be rid of Adolfo Suárez, he’s begun to listen again, the man who so many times in recent months has warned him of the danger of a coup d’état whose threads he knows or perceives and can perhaps cut, and who so many times and with such vehemence has recommended a touch on the rudder to ward off that danger, the man he’d brought to Madrid against Adolfo Suárez’s will as Deputy Chief of the Army General Staff, to have him nearby and available and perhaps — or this is at least what Armada desires or imagines, as so many desire or imagine — so he could direct the touch on the rudder by presiding over a unity government and in any case so he could inform and advise and control the Armed Forces and pacify their discontent, and eventually so he could help him in a situation like this. So, not even fifteen minutes after the beginning of the coup, the King calls Army General Headquarters and, after speaking to the Chief of the Army General Staff, General Gabeiras, asks him to pass the phone to General Armada, who is sitting beside him. The dialogue between the King and Armada is brief. Just as Milans has done minutes ago, Armada tries to calm the King down: the situation is serious, he tells him, but not desperate; and he can explain it: I’ll just go up to my office, pick up a few papers and I’m on my way to the Zarzuela, Sire. The King is still listening to these words (or has just heard them and, wanting Armada to tell him what he knows, is about to say: Yes, come over here, Alfonso) when Fernández Campo walks into the office and questions the King in silence. It’s Armada, the King answers, covering the receiver with his hand. He wants to come over. At this moment Fernández Campo, who has just spoken to Juste and run into the King’s office to relay the conversation to him, must think two things at once: the first is that, if he lets him into the Zarzuela, Armada could take over the Palace, because in an emergency situation like that the King might prefer to trust his lifelong secretary, relegating him, who’s barely been in the post for four years, to the background; the second is that, if as Juste has just told him the rebels are sure that Armada is at the Zarzuela directing the operation with the King’s consent, that means that the former secretary is in on the coup or is somehow connected to the coup or has the intention of benefiting from the coup. Both thoughts convince Fernández Campo that he has to prevent Armada from coming to the Zarzuela, so he speaks to the King and then asks for the telephone. This is Sabino, Alfonso, he says to Armada. Fernández Campo does not ask Armada why Juste has mentioned his name, why the golpistas of the Brunete Division appeal to him, but Armada repeats what he’s just told the King: the situation is serious, but not desperate; and he can explain it: I’m just going up to my office to pick up a few papers and I’m on my way to the Zarzuela, Sabino. And this is when Fernández Campo pronounces the final phrase: No, Alfonso. Stay there. If we need you we’ll call you.
That was it: although Armada insisted that he must speak to the King in person, Fernández Campo’s reiterated refusal obliged him to remain at Army General Headquarters, so that the former secretary could not approach the monarch and the fundamental piece of the coup could not fall into place. However, what would have occurred if the opposite had happened? What would have happened if that piece had also fallen into place? Let’s imagine for a moment that it did. Let’s imagine for a moment what would have occurred if everything had happened just as the golpistas had planned it, or as Armada had planned or as Armada and some of the golpistas might have imagined it would happen. Let’s imagine for a moment that, for whatever reasons, Juste hadn’t mentioned Armada’s name in his conversation with Fernández Campo; or that, even though he’d mentioned it, Fernández Campo had not been suspicious of Armada or feared he’d oust him from his privileged position at the King’s side or that he was involved in the coup or wanted to benefit from the coup; or that, even though Juste had mentioned Armada’s name and Fernández Campo had been suspicious of him, the King had decided to trust his old lifelong secretary rather than his new secretary, or at least had decided he needed to know what it was his old secretary knew about the coup and how he proposed to confront it. Then the King would have said to Armada on the phone: Yes, Alfonso, come on over here, and Armada would have gone to the Zarzuela, where he undoubtedly would have explained to the King that what had happened was what he’d been predicting and fearing and warning him was going to happen for months, he would have explained that, in spite of the gunfire in the Cortes, he was certain that the rebels’ plans were good and monarchist and he was sure that he could channel that military effusion — ‘redirect’ is the verb he might perhaps have used — to the advantage of the country and of the Crown. Then, maybe, he would have provoked in the Zarzuela a small and silent and almost invisible palace coup and Fernández Campo’s authority and influence would have been substituted by Armada’s authority and influence, and then the King (or the King advised by Armada) would next perhaps have ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while waiting for the problem of the occupation of the Cortes to be solved and the parliamentarians freed, to assume all the powers of the government, and perhaps with the aim of keeping the peace in the streets and protecting democracy might also have ordered the Captains General to imitate Milans del Bosch and take control of their respective military regions, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Captains General would have obeyed without a second’s hesitation, not only because it was the head of the Armed Forces and head of state and Franco’s heir who was ordering it, but also because Franco’s heir and the head of the Armed Forces and of the state was ordering them to do what almost all of them had been wanting to do for a long time. Then, once the control of the institutions and order in the cities was secured, or at the same time as those two things were being secured, a unit of the Brunete Division might perhaps have relieved Lieutenant-Colonel Tejero’s Civil Guards and might have quietly set up a cordon around the occupied Cortes, might have cleared the surrounding area and held the Cabinet and the deputies in the least ostentatious and least humiliating way possible while awaiting the appearance of the King’s envoy. Then Armada would have appeared in the Cortes as the King’s envoy and with the backing of the whole Army, he would have met with the main political leaders, he would have agreed with them that this situation, this use of force was totally unacceptable and would have persuaded them that the only way to fix it, and especially to save the threatened democracy, was to form a coalition or caretaker or unity government headed by himself, in short the option they’d all been driving forward over recent months to get the nation away from the edge of the precipice on which they all knew it was teetering. And then, once the government and deputies were persuaded that this was the best or only possible solution to the emergency (a solution on which the King would look kindly or that the King would not refuse if the Cortes approved it), everyone would have been set free and that very evening or that very night or the next day, with the soldiers back in their barracks or still in the streets, the session of investiture interrupted by Lieutenant Colonel Tejero would have been resumed, except that the Prime Minister elected in it would not have been Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo but Alfonso Armada, who would immediately have formed his government, a coalition or caretaker or unity government, a strong, stable, broad government that would have efficiently confronted Spain’s great problems — terrorism, the disintegration of the state, the economic crisis, the loss of values — and that would not only have calmed down the military and the political class, the businessmen and bankers, Rome and Washington, but also the whole of the citizenry, who after a short time would have come out to demonstrate in all the regional capitals of Spain to celebrate the happy result of the coup and the continuation of democracy, and would have applauded the King’s judicious attitude as the driving force behind the new political era and would have reinforced their trust in the monarchy as an indispensable institution to get the country out of the morass it was stuck in owing to the errors and frightful irresponsibility of certain politicians.