As I read emails from friends in the USA in response to the assault on Congress, I recalled reading Javier de Cercas’ Anatomía de un Instante, that Jan had given me as a birthday present, a 437 page analysis of a single moment: when Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero led a group of Civil Guards into the chamber of the Cortes (the Spanish Congress) on 23 February 1981 to stage a coup. His intent was to overturn the new democracy and restore military rule. The book is a close reading of one photo, and of three figures who stand out in it: Adolfo Suárez, the Presidente de Gobierno, General Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado, the Minister of Defense, and Santiago Carrillo, Secretary General of the Communist Party. As gunshots rang out in the chamber, and legislators cowered behind their desks, these three men alone refused to be cowed by Tejero and his men. All three were veterans, either of Franco’s regime, or of the struggle against it. All three had accepted the path to elected democracy and that day proved their determination to uphold it.
Antonio Tejero orders members of the Cortes to lie on the ground
Gutiérrez Mellado, an old-style military man, by then 69 years old, and the insurrectionists’ ultimate superior, stood up, approached the rebellious Civil Guards and reprimanded them. Suárez, fearful for the General’s safety, tried to restrain him, and when this did not succeed attempted to intercede as he was marched out of the chamber under illegal arrest by the rebels.
As General Gutiérrez Mellado reprimands the National Guard officers, Adolfo Suárez tries to intervene
I wonder who in
America will be the men or women with the moral and physical courage of General
Gutiérrez Mellado, Presidente Suárez, and Secretary General Carrillo, to simply say
firmly ‘No’ to tyranny. Few members of the Republican Party currently seem to possess such moral courage and integrity.
Then what happened to Mellado, Surez and Carrillo? Look as if the US Republican Party may divide which could lead to more extremism among those remaining.
ReplyDeleteThe subsequent events were that King Juan Carlos and Suárez, succeeded in preventing the military supporting the coup. Suárez continued in office, eventually retired from politics. He died in 2014 (believe of Alzheimer's). There is a very touching photo of Juan Carlos paying his last visit to Suárez in his garden. Gutiérrez Mellado resigned from office and from the army. He died in a car accident in Barcelona in 1995. Carrillo was expelled from the Communist Party in 1985 and formed a separate party. He died at home in 2012. These three men alone could not have stopped the coup without the support (and political cunning) of Juan Carlos.The point is that faced with the choice of submission to tyranny or refusing to submit they chose resistance. The parallel with the US Republicans is not exact, but Suárez and Gutiérrez Mellado were figures who were prominent under Franco (Carrillo was exiled), and could have sided with the rebels. Instead, they chose their constitutional duty.
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