Antonio Tejero, former Spanish lieutenant colonel who led failed military coup, dies at 93

MADRID — Antonio Tejero, a former Spanish lieutenant colonel who led a failed military coup in Spain in 1981, has died. He was 93 years old.

He died Wednesday evening in the eastern Spanish town of Alzira, a law firm representing Tejero's family said in a statement.

On Feb. 23, 1981, Tejero stormed Spain’s parliament alongside about 200 armed civil guards in what was considered the last and most serious attempt to revert Spain’s transition to democracy after dictator Gen. Francisco Franco’s death in 1975.

To the surprise of many, Tejero died on the same day that Spain's government published a trove of declassified documents related to the 1981 coup attempt.

That effort was foiled after former Spanish King Juan Carlos I denounced it on television and called on the armed forces not to support the coup and to respect Spain’s fledgling constitution.

But images of the dramatic 18 hours in which Tejero and the other guardsmen held members of Parliament and ministers hostage were seared into Spain’s collective memory — in no small part because Spaniards were able to watch the events partially captured by television cameras.

The images included officers firing guns in Parliament and lawmakers taking cover under their desks.

Tejero shouted out “Everyone, freeze!” while waving a pistol as he seized Parliament, wearing the patent leather tricorn hat of Spain’s civil guard gendarmerie police force. The attackers interrupted the chamber’s vote to swear in Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo as Spain’s prime minister.

Tejero had been involved in a separate attempted putsch in 1978. For his role in the botched 1981 coup, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison, and served about half that time.

After his release, Tejero divided his time between his native Málaga in southern Spain and Madrid, Spain's El País newspaper reported.

The Madrid-based law firm A. Cañizares Abogados said Wednesday that Tejero died “peacefully, surrounded by his entire family and after receiving the holy sacraments.”