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Concept
Antonio Tejero
Summary
Antonio Tejero Molina (born 30 April 1932) is a Spanish former Lieutenant Colonel of the Guardia Civil, and the most prominent figure in the failed coup d'état against the newly democratic Spanish government on 23 February 1981.
Tejero entered the Guardia Civil in 1951 with the rank of Lieutenant and assigned to a post in Catalonia. In 1958, he was promoted to Captain and posted successively to Galicia, Vélez-Málaga and the Canary Islands. In 1963, he was promoted to Major, and served in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Badajoz. In 1974, he became a Lieutenant Colonel, serving as the leader of the Comandancia in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa, but had to ask to be transferred to another region when his public declarations against the Basque flag, the Ikurriña, became known. For his accomplishments in the Basque country, and in combating ETA, he was named Chief of the Planning Staff of the Civil Guard in Madrid. But during his career, he had also begun to accumulate a record of dissent. ETA militants would rig bombs to Ikurriñas; when police officers tried to remove the flag, the bombs exploded, killing several Guardia Civil officers. When the Ikurriña was 'legalized', he sent a telegram to Madrid, asking if he should pay honors to the Ikurriña. In Malaga, he ordered or took a major part in a military deployment around the town during the seizure of a flag.
In 1978, Tejero, along with Police Captain Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas and an Army General Staff colonel, whose name was never made public, attempted a coup, known as Operation Galaxia. Tejero was sentenced to a short prison term for mutiny after the collapse of the attempted coup. He was in prison seven months and seven days.
1981 Spanish coup d'état attempt
On 23 February 1981, Tejero entered the Congress of Deputies, the lower house of the Spanish Parliament, with 150 Guardia Civil members and soldiers and held the congress members hostage for some 22 hours.
Official source
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