Like any of the rest of the conspirators, Cortina could argue on the eve of 23 February that there were only three ways the coup might faiclass="underline" the first was a reaction by the people; the second was a reaction by the Army; the third was a reaction by the King. Like any of the rest of the conspirators, Cortina might have thought the first possibility remote (and, if he did, 23 February proved him right by a long way): in 1936 Franco’s coup had failed and provoked a war because the people had taken to the streets in support of the government, with weapons in hand to defend the Republic; with the government and deputies held hostage in the Cortes, intimidated by the memory of the war, disenchanted with democracy or the functioning of democracy, lethargic and unarmed, in 1981 people didn’t know whether to applaud the coup or resign themselves to it, at most they offered a weak minority resistance. Like any of the rest of the conspirators, Cortina might also have thought the second possibility equally remote (and, if he did, 23 February would again prove him right by a long way): in 1936 Franco’s coup had failed and provoked a war because part of the Army had remained under the orders of the government and had joined the people in the defence of the Republic; in 1981, on the other hand, the Army was almost uniformly Francoist and therefore those in the high command who opposed a coup d’état would be the exceptions, not to mention those who would oppose a coup d’état sponsored by the King. A third possibility remained: the King. It was, in fact, the only possibility, or at least the only possibility that Cortina or any of the rest of the conspirators might have considered feasible in advance: it could be imagined — in spite of the coup not being against the King but with the King, in spite of not being a hard coup but a soft coup, in spite of not aiming in theory to destroy democracy but to rectify it, in spite of the enormous pressure the rebel officers and a large part of the Army would bring to bear on him and even in spite of the fact that the government resulting from the coup should count on the approval of the Cortes and could be presented by Armada not as a triumph of the coup but as a solution to the coup — the King might decide not to sponsor the coup and make use of his position as Franco’s heir and symbolic chief of the Armed Forces to stop it, perhaps remembering the dissuasive example of his grandfather Alfonso XIII and of his brother-in-law Constantine of Greece, who accepted the help of the Army to keep themselves in power and less than a decade later were dethroned.* However, what would happen in the case of the King opposing the coup? It’s true that no one could predict it, because once the coup was under way almost anything was possible, including a coup with the King captained by the two most monarchist generals in the Army turning into a coup against the King that would end up taking down the monarchy; but it’s also true that, in the case of the King opposing the coup, the most likely result was that the coup would fail, because it was very unlikely that a monarchist coup would degenerate into an anti-monarchist coup, just as it’s true that, if the coup failed owing to the King’s intervention, he would become to all intents and purposes the saviour of democracy, which could only mean the reinforcement of the monarchy. I insist: I’m not saying that this was the only possible result of the coup for the monarchy if the King opposed it; what I’m saying is that, like any of the rest of the plotters, before joining the coup Cortina might have arrived at the conclusion that the risks the coup entailed for the monarchy were much fewer than the benefits it might bring in its wake, and that in consequence the coup was a good coup because it would triumph whether it triumphed or failed: the triumph of the coup would strengthen the Crown (that’s at least what Cortina might have thought and what Armada and Milans were thinking); its failure would likewise do so. Whether or not he’d read Machiavelli and whether or not he recalled his advice, that might have been Cortina’s reasoning; supposing that it was, 23 February also proved him right on this point, and proved him right by a long way.
* It is possible, however, that the monarchist golpistas might not have considered the example of Alfonso XIII and Constantine of Greece at all discouraging to the Crown; maybe their reasoning was the opposite of that of the King on 23 February: for them it was precisely the help of the Army that allowed the King’s grandfather and brother-in-law to extend their stay in power for a few years and, if they’d known how to administer it with intelligence, could have prevented the end of the monarchy in Spain and Greece.
Chapter 7
The preceding chapter is only conjecture: the main question — the main question about Cortina, the main question about the role of the intelligence services on 23 February — still stands, and that’s why on the basis of the information I’ve set out so far we cannot yet make up our minds about either of the two alternative versions of what happened in the days before the coup. We’re sure that Javier Calderón’s CESID did not participate as such in the coup, but we’re not sure that Cortina’s AOME did participate in the coup. We’re sure that a member of AOME, Captain Gómez Iglesias, collaborated with Tejero in the preparation and execution of the coup, but we’re not sure he did so on Cortina’s orders and not on his own initiative, out of solidarity or friendship with the lieutenant colonel; nor are we sure that other members of AOME — Sergeant Sales and Corporals Monge and Moya — participated in the coup by escorting Tejero’s buses to their target, and we don’t know whether, supposing that they had done, they did so on the orders of Gómez Iglesias, who, in spite of the rigorous control Cortina kept over his men, might have recruited them to the operation behind Cortina’s back, or whether they did so on the orders of Cortina, who might have joined the coup with his unit or with part of his unit because he considered it a good coup no matter if it triumphed or failed. On this main point we have conjectures and we have possibilities, but we don’t have certainties, we don’t even have probabilities; maybe we can approach them if we try to answer two still pending questions: what exactly did Cortina do on 23 February? What exactly happened at AOME on 23 February?