That’s all Armada needs, and twenty minutes before midnight, accompanied only by his adjutant, Major Bonell, the general leaves the Buenavista and heads for the Cortes. Several generals, including Gabeiras, have offered to accompany him, but Armada has insisted on going alone: his double bluff allows no witnesses; he’s received permission from Gabeiras to offer Tejero, in exchange for the deputies’ liberty, a plane to fly to Portugal and money to finance a provisional exile; he has gone through the pantomime of asking Milans to ask Tejero for a password to allow him entrance to the Cortes (and Milans has given on Tejero’s behalf the same password that Armada probably gave Tejero two days earlier: ‘Duque de Ahumada’); he has gone through the pantomime of taking leave of the generals at Headquarters brandishing a copy of the Constitution (and the generals have seen him off in their turn with the certainty or hope that he’ll return as Prime Minister of the government). Army General Headquarters is located just a few hundred metres from Carrera de San Jerónimo, so barely a few minutes after leaving in an official car Armada arrives outside the Cortes, enters the Hotel Palace and speaks to the group of soldiers and civilians managing the cordon round Tejero, among them Generals Aramburu Topete and Sáenz de Santamaría and the civil governor of Madrid, Mariano Nicolás: Armada offers hazy explanations about his mission, but clarifies that he’s there in an individual, not institutional capacity; otherwise, the news he brings is so alarming — according to him, four Captains General are backing Milans — and his interlocutors’ confidence in his prestige is so great that they all urge him to go in right away and negotiate with Tejero, who has been demanding his presence for quite some time. So he does, and at half past twelve at night, while the news that he was about to make a pact with the golpistas to bring the hostage-taking to an end spreads through the crowds of military officers, journalists and onlookers swarming round the Hotel Palace and vicinity, Armada arrives at the gates of the Cortes accompanied only by Major Bonell.
What happens next is one of the central episodes of 23 February; also one of the most problematic and most debated. At the entrance to the Cortes General Armada gives the password to the Civil Guards defending it: ‘Duque de Ahumada’. It is a superfluous caution, because during the whole afternoon and evening numerous soldiers and civilians have gone in and out of the Cortes with almost total freedom, but the Guards advise Captain Abad and he advises Lieutenant Colonel Tejero, who immediately comes and stands to attention in front of the general, undoubtedly relieved at the arrival of the long-awaited military authority and political leader of the coup. Then, followed by Captain Abad and Major Bonell, the two men walk to the door of the old building of the Cortes, which leads to the entrance to the chamber where the deputies wait. According to Tejero, Armada apologizes for the delay, confirms that there have been certain problems that fortunately have now been resolved and, just as he’d explained on Saturday night, Tejero’s mission concludes at this point: now he’ll take charge of negotiating with the parliamentary leaders and get them to propose him as Prime Minister of a unity government. Tejero then asks what ministerial post General Milans will occupy in that government, and then Armada commits the biggest mistake of his life; instead of lying, instead of avoiding the question, allowing himself to be carried away by his natural arrogance and his instinct for command, he answers: None. Milans will be President of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At this moment, on the verge of crossing the threshold of the old building, Tejero stops and grips Armada’s forearm. One moment, General, says the lieutenant colonel. We have to talk about this. For the next two or three minutes Armada and Tejero remain on the patio that separates the new building and the old building of the Cortes, talking, Tejero’s hand on Armada’s forearm the whole time, watched from a few metres’ distance by Major Bonell and Captain Abad, who don’t understand what’s going on. Bonell and Abad also don’t understand why, after the two or three minutes, Armada and Tejero don’t go into the old building, as they were about to do, but cross the patio and go into the new building and immediately appear behind the big windows of a first-floor office. Next the two men spend almost an hour shut up in there, arguing, but Bonell and Abad (and the officers and Civil Guards who observe the scene beside them from the patio) can only try to guess their words from their gestures, as if they were watching a silent film: no one can clearly distinguish the expression on their faces but they can all see them speaking, first naturally and later with emphasis, all see them get heated and gesticulate, all see them walk back and forth, at some point some of them think they see Armada taking a pair of reading glasses out of his jacket and later others think they see him take the telephone off the hook and speak into it for a few minutes before handing it to Tejero, who also speaks into the receiver and then hands it back to Armada, at least one Civil Guard remembers that towards the end he saw the two men standing still and in silence, a couple of metres apart, looking out of the windows as if they’d suddenly noticed they were being observed although actually with their gazes turned inwards, seeing nothing except their own fury and their own perplexity, like two fish gasping inside an empty fish tank. So neither Major Bonell nor Captain Abad nor any of the officials and Civil Guards watching the discussion between Armada and Tejero from the Cortes patio could pick up or deduce a single one of the words crossing between them, but they all knew that the negotiation had failed long before the two men reappeared on the patio and separated without saluting, without even looking at each other, and especially long before they heard Armada, as he passed them on his way towards Carrera de San Jerónimo and the Hotel Palace, pronounce a phrase that all who heard it would take a long time to forget: ‘That man is completely mad.’
He wasn’t. It’s possible to reconstruct with some exactitude what happened between Armada and Tejero in the new building of the Cortes, because we have the direct and contradictory testimony of both protagonists; we also have numerous indirect testimonies. As I reconstruct it or imagine it, what happened was the following:
As soon as the two men are alone in the office, Armada explains to the lieutenant colonel again what he’s just explained on the patio: his mission is complete and now he must let him in to talk with the deputies to offer them their liberty in exchange for the formation of a unity government under his premiership; he adds that, given that things haven’t come out exactly as they’d anticipated and the violence and racket of the assault on the Cortes have provoked a negative reaction at the Zarzuela, the most advisable thing is that when the deputies accept his conditions the lieutenant colonel and his men should leave for Portugal in a plane that’s already waiting for them at the Getafe airfield, with enough money to spend a while abroad until things calm down a little and they can return to Spain. The lieutenant colonel listens carefully; for the moment he overlooks the offer of money and exile, but not the mention of the unity government. In meetings before the coup it has been explained to him that the result of the coup would be a government of unity, but, loyal to his utopia of the nation as barracks, he has always taken as a given that this government would be a military government. He asks Armada what he means by a unity government; Armada explains: a government made up of independent public figures — military officers, businessmen, journalists — but most of all by members of all the political parties. Perplexed, Tejero asks what politicians would make up this government; Armada gets wind of the danger, digresses, tries not to answer, but ends up revealing that his government would include not only politicians from the right and the centre, but also Socialists and Communists. There are those who even claim that Armada carries a written list of his proposed government in order to be able to negotiate it with the party leaders and which, cornered by Tejero, he agrees to read to him.* Whatever the case, at this point the lieutenant colonel explodes: he has not assaulted the Cortes in order to hand the government over to Socialists and Communists, he has not staged a coup d’état so that the Anti-Spain could govern Spain, he is not going to get on a plane and flee like a fugitive while this ignominious scheme is organized at his expense, he will only accept a military junta headed by General Milans. Confronted with that threat of rebellion inside the rebellion, Armada tries to get the lieutenant colonel to listen to reason: a military junta is a fantasy and a mistake, the unity government is the best outcome of the coup and moreover the only one possible, Milans agrees and will not accept anything else, the King will not accept anything else, the Army will not accept anything else, the country will not accept anything else; circumstances are what they are, and Tejero must understand that the triumph of a soft coup is a thousand times better than the failure of a hard coup, because, although the forms might be different, the objectives of the hard coup are the same as those of the soft coup; he must also understand that the hard coup has no support and not the slightest possibility of triumphing and that, for him and his men, a short spell abroad as exiles living in luxury is a thousand times better than a long spell in prison as delinquents of democracy. Tejero answers that he does not even want to hear talk of exile, governments of unity and soft coups. He insists: I have not gone this far for that. Then (then or a little earlier, or a little later: impossible to place it precisely) Armada also explodes, and the two men exchange shouts, reproaches and accusations, until Armada appeals as a last resort to discipline and Tejero replies: I obey only General Milans’ orders. It is at this moment that Armada turns to Milans. Using the office telephone, tapped by the police several hours previously like all the rest of the telephones in the Cortes, Armada speaks to Milans, explains what’s going on, asks him to convince Tejero that his plan is a good one and hands the receiver to the lieutenant colonel. Milans repeats Armada’s arguments to Tejero: the only solution is a unity government for everyone and temporary exile for the lieutenant colonel and his men; Tejero repeats his own arguments to Milans: exile is a dishonourable way out, a government of Socialists and Communists is no solution, he’ll accept no solution other than a military junta headed by General Milans himself. Who said anything about a military junta? replies Milans. I’m no politician, and neither are you: what we’re doing here is putting things at His Majesty’s disposition, so that he and Armada should decide what to do; now they’ve decided, so mission accomplished: obey Armada and let him take charge of everything. That’s an order. I cannot obey that order, General, sir, answers Tejero. And you know it. Do not ask me to do what I cannot do. The conversation between the two men goes on for a few more minutes, but the coup’s chain of command is now broken and Milans does not manage to get Tejero to obey him; once Milans has failed, Armada makes one last attempt, also to no avaiclass="underline" not even the warning that a group from special operations is preparing to take the Cortes by storm manages to overcome the stubbornness of the lieutenant colonel, who threatens Armada before he leaves with a massacre if anyone tries to end the hostage-taking by force.