Why did 

Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero failed in overthrowing the Spanish Democracy in

1981 and what significance did the attempt have in Spain?

When there is a mass uprising (which involves violence) against the current government,
according to Edward Luttwak (1968), that can be defined as a coup d’état. There are a number
of reasons of why a coup d’état would take place, e.g. political, economical and social reasons.
On February 23, 1981, a coup d’état was attempted. It was led by Antonio Tejero, a Colonel-
Lieutenant of the Guardia Civil (Civil Guards of Spain). The coup d’état is now commonly known
as ‘El Tejerazo’ or ’23-F’. It was an uprising against the Spanish democratic government which
was led by Juan Carlos and Adolfo Suarez. This coup took place due to a number of different
motives including the ineffectiveness of the government when dealing with problems such as
the economy (20% unemployment and 16% inflation), political problems (the Basque separatist
group ETA - the car bomb that killed a Spanish Minister) and social problems (creating effective
autonomous governments for Spanish regions). The coup started with Antonio Tejero marching
into the Spanish Congress of Deputies with 200 armed officers from the Guardia Civil during an
election for the countries new Prime Minister. The whole coup lasted for 18 hours and the
rebels surrendered without doing harm to anyone. Although it was short and ineffective, it still
had a lasting effect on Spain. This paper is going to investigate exactly what that effect is and
why the coup had failed.

The first main reason for the coup to have failed was that the coup lacked a major military
force. Colonel-Lieutenant Tejero seized the Congress with only 200 men. Jaime Milans del
Bosch, Captain General of the Third Military Region, supported the coup by sending out tanks
onto the streets of Valencia and tried to call for more military support. But that was about it.
They simply did not have a large enough military force to take over a country. Too many
insurgent leaders backed out of the coup. The lack of manpower was a huge reason for the
coup to fail.

The importance of military manpower in a coup cannot be overstated. Lin Biao’s attempt
against Mao Zedong also failed mainly due to the fact that he did not had the backing of the
military even though he was the commander of the military force in China back then. Hitler’s
Beer-Hall Putsch failed because he had a limited force. On the other hand, Yuan Shikai, as
stated by Colin Mackerras (2009), was the commander of the Manchu military and he was able
to mobilize it against the Manchu government. Therefore, he succeeded in overthrowing the
Manchu Dynasty and coming to power himself. Military strength is a deciding factor in any coup
and therefore a successful coup must have a formidable military force. Tejero had no
formidable military force backing him and therefore, he failed.

Failure in getting popular support was also another major reason for the coup to have failed.
The coup failed in seizing communication means such as radio stations and broadcasting
stations meant that the democratic government was able to denounce and criticize the
insurgents while the insurgents did not have any means to publicize their cause or in any ways
promote themselves to the public. The public had limited understanding of the whole coup and
therefore there was no way for them to sympathize with the rebels. In fact, the public had so
much fear for the chaos the insurgents caused; most of them were actually against the
insurgents even though they did agree that the democratic government were not that great.

Popular support is a supporting factor in a coup. It is true that a coup can be successful even if it
does not have a lot of support from the people given that it has a large military force backing it.
However, a coup is doomed to fail if it is opposed by the people. In ‘El Tejerazo’, because the
rebels were unable to promote their coup to the mass due to the failure in seizing
communication means, they could not gain any supporters or sympathizers. As mentioned, the
chaos caused by the coup actually turned the population against the coup. This is one of the
main reasons why ‘El Tejerazo’ failed. Yuan Shikai’s attempt in 1912 was successful because the
people were so against the Manchu government that they would support almost any attempts
to overthrow it. Moreover, the people were not unfamiliar with chaos since it was everywhere
due to different rebellions and wars in China. Yuan had support from almost every sector of the
population. Therefore he could overthrow the Manchu Dynasty and become the ruler himself.

The third reason might be the only one that the insurgents could not have controlled. The
democratic government was confident and efficient in dealing with the insurgents even though
it is a new and young government as Franco died only 6 years ago. The government was able
form a provisional government with officials from different ministries to ensure that the coup
was dealt with swiftly (McLaren, 2008). This gave to the people of Spain a lot of confidence to
the government due to their effectiveness. The King himself refused to support the coup and
promote the democratic government further strengthened the confidence that the people had
for the democratic government.

Again, comparing with Yuan’s coup, ‘El Tejerazo’ was a complete failure in this sense. The rebels
completely underestimated the capabilities of the Spanish democratic government and
therefore they failed. On the other hand, Yuan had been working for the Manchu government
for almost 30 years and therefore he understood the capabilities of the Manchu government
very well.

Summarizing the last few paragraphs, the main reasons for ‘El Tejerazo’ to fail was that it was
badly planned (lacking military support and failed to seize strategic spots and communication
means), the people did not support a military coup and the underestimation of the Spanish
democratic government. That much should be clear now that we are at this part of this essay.
However, why did the people not support the coup? The democratic government was quite
impotent in dealing with certain problems. There are two different answers to that question.
Firstly, the people do not support a military coup. They had enjoyed more than 40 years of
peace after the Spanish Civil War ended (They did not take part in the Second World War) and
therefore were reluctant to break that peace just for a future that was unclear. Also, if Tejero
succeeded, a military government would be in place and that would have sounded like a second
‘Franco government’ which the people were already tired of. They had worked hard for a
democracy and were not willing to give it up to Tejero just through a coup d’état.

This leads to answer the significance of the coup d’état. Spain had took 3 years after Franco’s
death to reach a democratic government, a parliamentary monarchy. ‘El Tejerazo’ was the first
attempt to switch this democratic state back into a dictatorship, into a military state. Yet the
Spaniards successfully stopped that from happening. That suggested that Spain had reached a
state that the people had now have the will and the power to resist dictatorship and to protect
their democracy.

In this sense, ‘El Tejerazo’ is similar to Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch/Munich Putsch. As stated in
Ruth Henig’s book (1998), it was the last Putsch Hitler ever attempted against the Weimar
Republic. The Putsch had made Hitler realize that sole military force was no longer able to take
over Germany. A legal method must be used in order to rule over the country. ‘El Tejerazo’ had
the same effect in Spain and therefore political parties in Spain had never attempted any more
military coup d’état and the only way to gain power in Spain nowadays is to win votes during
elections.

‘El Tejerazo’ was also significant in another sense that it, to a certain extent, shows how
important the monarchy is to Spain. The stance of the King was not only supported, but looked
up to by the people of Spain during the course of the coup d’état (McLaren, 2008). The stance
of the King was so important for the Spaniards that some defined the collapse of the coup
d’état started when the King undermined the insurgents and their cause on national television.
The monarchy emerged as a strong spiritual leader of Spain and that is probably why Spain is
still a parliamentary monarchy, why Spaniards are willing to pay for the monarchy’s bills even
though the monarchy does not really do anything practical, because the monarchy had proved
itself to be the spiritual leader of Spain.

There have been a number of reasons introduced of why ‘El Tejerazo’ ultimately failed in this
essay, including the lack of a major military force, failure in attaining popular support, and the
underestimation of the democratic government. To conclude, the lack of preparation and the
lack of support from the population are the main reasons for ‘El Tejerazo’ to have failed. The
significance of ‘El Tejerazo’ is also due to the main reason for ‘El Tejerazo’ to have failed. It is
significant because it was a coup that was not hugely supported by the population. It was very
weakly supported by the military. It is significant because ‘El Tejerazo’ symbolizes the
completion of the transition from dictatorship to a democratic monarchy in Spain.
References

Edward Luttwak (1968). Coup d'etat: a practical handbook. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc.

Colin Mackerras (2009). China in transformation, 1900-1949. Sydney: Longman

Ruth Henig (1998). The Weimar Republic, 1919-1933. London: Routledge

Lauren M. McLaren(2008) Constructing Democracy in Southern Europe: A comparative analysis

of Italy, Spain, and Turkey. Milton Park, Oxon: Routledge