1981 Spanish coup d'état attempt in the context of List of prime ministers of Spain

⭐ Core Definition: 1981 Spanish coup d'état attempt

A coup d'état was attempted in Spain in February 1981 by elements of the Civil Guard and the Spanish military. The failure of the coup marked the last serious attempt to revert Spain to a Francoist government and served to consolidate Spain's democratization process. King Juan Carlos I played a major role in foiling the coup, and the monarchy emerged with renewed legitimacy as a result.

The coup began on 23 February 1981 when Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero, along with 200 armed Civil Guard officers, stormed the Congress of Deputies chamber in Madrid during a vote to swear in Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo as President of the Government. The officers held the parliamentarians and ministers hostage for 18 hours, during which the King denounced the coup in a public television broadcast, calling for rule of law and the democratic government to continue. The royal address fatally undermined the coup, and the hostage-takers surrendered the next morning and all deputies were freed. A simultaneous coup attempt, executed by Captain General Jaime Milans del Bosch in Valencia, also failed. Tejero, Milans del Bosch and a third conspirator, General Alfonso Armada, were sentenced to thirty years in prison. In 1988 the Spanish Supreme Court suggested pardoning Alfonso Armada and Tejero; the government of Felipe González pardoned the former.

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1981 Spanish coup d'état attempt in the context of Spanish transition to democracy

The Spanish transition to democracy, known in Spain as la Transición (IPA: [la tɾansiˈθjon]; 'the Transition') or la Transición española ('the Spanish Transition'), was a period of modern Spanish history encompassing the regime change that moved from the Francoist dictatorship to the consolidation of a parliamentary system, in the form of constitutional monarchy under Juan Carlos I.

The democratic transition began two days after the death of Francisco Franco, in November 1975. Initially, "the political elites left over from Francoism" attempted "reform of the institutions of dictatorship" through existing legal means, but social and political pressure saw the formation of a democratic parliament in the 1977 general election, which had the imprimatur to write a new constitution that was then approved by referendum in December 1978. The following years saw the beginning of the development of the rule of law and establishment of regional government, amidst ongoing terrorism, an attempted coup d'état and global economic problems. The Transition is said to have concluded after the landslide victory of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in the 1982 general election and the first peaceful transfer of executive power.

View the full Wikipedia page for Spanish transition to democracy

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