Retired Officer's 'Uprising' Talk Echoes Only in Military Casino

Retired Officer's 'Sound of Sabers' Ends at the Bar

The setting is not a barracks. It's a bar counter or the lounge of a military casino, with a half-finished glass of whiskey. A retired military officer has spoken of a supposed 'military uprising,' and the echo of these statements has brought the old expression 'sound of sabers' back into circulation: the recurring rumor of a coup that never quite materializes. The news has been labeled sensationalist, and some openly doubt that the author of these words represents anyone more than themselves.

Is there an abyss between a retired officer and an uprising?

The first objection that arises is scale. It's one thing for a uniformed officer, now retired, to talk about an uprising, and quite another for that to be the 'sound of sabers.' There is an abyss between these two extremes, and that is the most repeated argument: without command, without troops, and without structure, a retired person is an opinion, not a threat.

Conversely, another current holds the opposite view. It is argued that the Armed Forces are no longer free from any contamination and that institutional degradation affects everything. This is the most pessimistic reading and, for now, the one with the least concrete support.

The real noise, according to skeptics, is glasses

A good part of the debate reduces the issue to an issue of alcohol. The noise, they say, is not of sabers but of whisky glasses and golf courses. A veteran who frequented the military casino in the 90s — a member then of the FMTO, before its gallery closed — describes that atmosphere as a problem of alcohol rather than conspiracy. The couplet that summarizes the general tone could not be more Spanish: a coup from the bar, or the casino, which amounts to the same thing but is more refined.

There lies the dislocating fact: the most serious matter of the day is dismissed with a drink, a green, and a rhyme.