Tejero dies at 93 amid 23-F declassification

Tejero dies at 93 amid 23-F declassification

Messages in the debate report the death of Antonio Tejero Molina at 93, two days before the anniversary of the assault on Congress he led in 1981, and place the death on the same day that, according to those same messages, the declassified documents of 23-F were released. On paper, a calendar coincidence. For several participants, the kind of coincidence that makes you look twice at the clock: the man who spent 18 years in prison for the failed coup was fading away just when, according to these accounts, the files on that coup were being peine.

He died at home, according to those messages. The king emeritus, the other central figure in the story, remains outside Spain. The asymmetry —one in his bed, the other in a gilded cage— is one of the axes of the debate.

Who Antonio Tejero was: Guardia Civil, not Army

He joined the Guardia Civil at 19 and trained at the General Military Academy of Zaragoza, according to the biographical account reproduced in the thread. In December 1955 he was promoted to lieutenant, with his first posting in Manresa, where he remained for three years. In 1958 he was promoted to captain and went to La Cañiza. Pure seniority, no shortcuts: up to lieutenant colonel he rose by length of service.

The detail is not minor. In the thread, anyone who placed him in the Army is corrected: he was never there. He was Guardia Civil, and in that uniform he entered the chamber.

The offer he rejected: 2 million pesetas and a command post

The story that has circulated most in the thread maintains that, after 23-F, Tejero was offered 2 million pesetas, paid exile, pardon, return to Spain in two years, promotion to colonel and the command of Guipúzcoa. The counterpart was accepting a government with Felipe González as vice president and with Solé Tura and Tamames, of the PCE, as ministers.

He said no. The refusal cost him 18 years in prison, according to that same version, in a prison that those who knew it describe as soft: companions who went to eat with him, hotel treatment, a life much better than that of an ordinary prisoner. The real price, adds that account, was another: staying out forever. He served his sentence to the end and, according to that same account, rejected pardons out of dignity. Four decades later, that gesture is what earns him the respect of several participants in the debate.

What is really in the declassified papers

According to several messages, the declassification came on the same day as the death and with it the first problem: there are no two identical readings.