But this book is just as much — I’d better admit from the start — an arrogant attempt to convert the failure of my novel about 23 February into a success, because it has the nerve not to renounce anything. Or almost anything: it won’t renounce getting right up close to the pure reality of 23 February, and from there, although it’s not a history book and no one should kid themselves and search it for hitherto unknown facts or relevant contributions to the knowledge of our recent past, it will not entirely renounce being read as a history book;* nor will it renounce answering to itself as well as answering to reality, and from there, although it’s not a novel, it won’t entirely renounce being read as a novel, not even as an incredibly strange experimental version of The Three Musketeers; and most of all — and this is perhaps its worst impudence — this book will not entirely renounce understanding by means of reality that which it renounced understanding by means of fiction, and from there seeing itself deep down as not being about 23 February, but only about an image of or a gesture from Adolfo Suárez on 23 February and, collaterally, about an image of or a gesture from General Gutiérrez Mellado and about an image of or a gesture from Santiago Carrillo on 23 February. To try to understand that gesture or that image is to try to answer the question I posed to myself one 23 February when I presumptuously felt that reality was demanding I write a novel; to try to understand it without the powers and liberty of fiction is the challenge this book sets itself.
* Just as if it did aspire to be read as a history book, it takes as its starting point the first documentary evidence of 23 February: the recorded images of the storming of the Cortes; it cannot use, however, the second and almost final piece of evidence: the recordings of the telephone conversations that took place during the evening and night of 23 February between the occupiers of the Cortes and people outside. The recording was made on the orders of Francisco Laína, Director of State Security and head of an emergency government formed that evening on the King’s orders by politicians belonging to the second line of state administration in order to stand in for the hijacked government in the Cortes. The recording or part of the recording was heard on the afternoon of the 24th by the National Defence Council presided over by the King and Adolfo Suárez, in the Zarzuela Palace (and was surely decisive in the government’s issuing an immediate arrest warrant for the leader of the coup, General Armada); it’s possible it was also head by the examining magistrate of the 23 February trial, who did not allow it to be admitted as evidence because it had been obtained without judicial permission; then it disappeared, and since then nothing certain has been known about it. There are those who say it is in the archives of the intelligence services, which is false. There are those who say it was destroyed. There are those who say that, if it wasn’t destroyed, it can only be in the archives of the Interior Ministry. There are those who say that it was in the archives of the Interior Ministry and only disappeared from there a few years after the coup. There are those who say that Adolfo Suárez took a copy of part of the recording with him when he left government. There are many other conjectures. I don’t know anything more.
PART ONE. THE PLACENTA OF THE COUP
~ ~ ~
Twenty-three minutes after six on 23 February 1981. In the chamber of the Congress of Deputies, the lower house of the Cortes, they are holding the investiture vote for Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, who is about to be confirmed as Prime Minister to replace Adolfo Suárez, who resigned twenty-five days ago and is still acting Prime Minister after an almost five-year term in office during which the country had come to the end of a dictatorship and built a democracy. Sitting in their seats while waiting their turn to vote, the deputies chat, doze or daydream in the early evening torpor; the only voice that resounds clearly in the hall is that of Víctor Carrascal, Secretary of the Congress, who reads the list of deputies from the speakers’ rostrum so that, as they hear their name, they stand up and support or refuse with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ Calvo Sotelo’s candidacy, or they abstain. This is now the second vote and there is no suspense: in the first, held three days ago, Calvo Sotelo did not obtain the support of an absolute majority of the deputies, but in this second round he needs only the support of a simple majority, so — given that this majority is assured — unless something unexpected happens, in a few minutes the candidate will be elected Prime Minister.
But something unexpected happens. Víctor Carrascal reads the name José Nasarre de Letosa Conde, who votes ‘yes’; then he reads the name Carlos Navarrete Merino, who votes ‘no’; then he reads the name Manuel Núñez Encabo, and at that moment an anomalous noise is heard, perhaps a shout from the right-hand door to the chamber, and Núñez Encabo does not vote or his vote is inaudible or gets lost amid the perplexed commotion of the deputies, some of whom look at each other, wondering whether or not to believe their ears, while others sit up straight in their seats to try to establish what’s happening, maybe less anxious than curious. Clear and disconcerted, the Secretary’s voice enquires: ‘What’s going on?’, mumbles something, asks again: ‘What’s going on?’, and at the same time a uniformed usher comes in from the right, strides urgently across the central semicircle of the chamber, where the stenographers sit, and starts up the stairs between the deputies’ benches; halfway up he stops, exchanges a few words with one of the deputies and turns around; then he goes up another three steps and turns around again. It is then that a second shout is heard, indistinct, from the left-hand entrance to the chamber, and then, also unintelligible, a third, and many deputies — and all the stenographers, and the usher as well — turn to look towards the left-hand entrance.
The angle changes; a second camera focuses on the left wing of the chamber: pistol in hand, Lieutenant Colonel of the Civil Guard Antonio Tejero calmly walks up the steps of the dais, passes behind the Secretary and stands beside the Speaker Landelino Lavilla, who looks at him incredulously. The lieutenant colonel shouts: ‘Nobody move!’, and a couple of spellbound seconds follow during which nothing happens and no one moves and nothing seems to be going to happen or happen to anybody, except silence. The angle changes, but not the silence: the lieutenant colonel has vanished because the first camera focuses on the right wing of the chamber, where all the parliamentarians who had stood up have taken their seats again, and the only one still on his feet is General Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado, Deputy Prime Minister of the acting government; beside him, Adolfo Suárez remains seated on the Prime Minister’s bench, leaning forward, a hand gripping the armrest of his seat, as if he is about to stand up too. Four nearby shouts, distinct and indisputable, then break the spelclass="underline" someone shouts: ‘Silence!’; someone shouts: ‘Nobody move!’; someone shouts: ‘Get down on the floor!’; someone shouts: ‘Everyone down on the floor!’ The chamber rushes to obey: the usher and stenographers kneel down beside their table; some deputies appear to cringe in their seats. General Gutiérrez Mellado, however, goes out to face the rebellious lieutenant colonel, while Prime Minister Suárez tries to hold him back unsuccessfully, clutching at his jacket. Now Lieutenant Colonel Tejero appears in the frame again, coming down the steps from the speakers’ rostrum, but he stops halfway, confused or intimidated by the presence of General Gutiérrez Mellado, who walks towards him demanding with categorical gestures that he immediately leave the chamber, while three Civil Guards burst in through the right-hand entrance and pounce on the scrawny old general, push him, grab him by the jacket, shove him, nearly throwing him to the ground. Prime Minister Suárez stands up and goes to his Deputy Prime Minister; the lieutenant colonel is halfway down the steps, undecided whether to go all the way down, watching the scene. Then the first shot rings out; then the second shot and Prime Minister Suárez grabs the arm of General Gutiérrez Mellado, who stands undaunted in front of a Civil Guard who orders him with gestures and shouts to get down on the floor; then the third shot rings out and, still staring down the Civil Guard, General Gutiérrez Mellado pulls his arm violently out of the Prime Minister’s grip; then the burst of gunfire erupts. While the bullets rip visible chunks of plaster out of the ceiling and one after another the stenographers and the usher hide under the table and the benches swallow up the deputies until not a single one of them remains in sight, the old general stands amid the automatic-rifle fire, with his arms hanging down at his sides, looking at the insubordinate Civil Guards, who do not stop firing. As for Prime Minister Suárez, he slowly returns to his seat, sits down, leans against the backrest and stays there, inclined slightly to the right, solitary, statuesque and spectral in a desert of empty benches.