Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

On January 29th, with economic discontent at its peak (see below) and Catalonia, the Basque region, Galicia and Andalucia all embarking upon separatist experiments in home rule, Suárez was forced to resign by his own party—resentful not at his failures (the 1979 general elections under the new constitution had produced another victory for the UCD) but at his achievements—and his autocratic management style. Before another UCD politician, Calvo Sotelo, could succeed him in office, a general strike broke out in the Basque Provinces. To its critics on the Right, democratic Spain appeared leaderless and on the verge of breaking up. On February 23rd Lt. Colonel Antonio Tejero Molín Molina of the Civil Guard seized the Cortes at gunpoint. In a coordinated move, General Jaime Milans del Bosch, commander of the Valencia military region, declared a state of emergency and called upon the King to dissolve the Cortes and install a military government. Though in retrospect their actions appear theatrical and bumbling, Tejero and Milans del Bosch surely had tradition and precedent on their side. Moreover there was little the Cortes itself, or the various political parties and their supporters, could have done to block a military coup d’état, and the sympathies of the army itself were far from certain.16 What determined the outcome, and the shape of subsequent Spanish history, were King Juan Carlos I’s outright rejection of the conspirators’ demands and his televised speech uncompromisin...