Given the speed with which Sumar, the Republican Left (ERC), EH Bildu and BNG have reacted, it is an interesting pawn movement on the chessboard: the proposal made by these parties to declassify the official documents on the attempted military coup of February 23rd, 1981, after lieutenant colonel Antonio Tejero Molina, protagonist of that episode, asserted in an interview on Sunday that then-king Juan Carlos I was at the apex of that reactionary coup aimed at ending the incipient Spanish democracy. It is not at all insignificant that they are four partners of the last Pedro Sánchez legislature who, without a doubt, will be partners again if the Socialist (PSOE) leader is given the nod for a new four-year term.
Sumar, which this week plans to present its government agreement with the PSOE for the new legislature, has not yet decided how it will approach the request for declassification, but, providing this affair does not end in mere words, the party will have seats in the next Spanish cabinet if Sánchez finally gets the necessary votes. ERC, Bildu and BNG have made their proposal by submitting a non-legislative proposal to the Congress of Deputies, stressing that, after Tejero's statement and after more than 40 years of hiding official information from Spanish public opinion, there is no possible justification for not knowing the truth with complete clarity.
The Socialist government, aware that this was a problem that could sooner or later open a can of worms, proposed a modification of Spain's official secrets act, dividing such matters into secret, top secret, confidential and restricted. Depending on the category in which the document was classified, the declassification terms range from four to 50 years. In some cases, an extension can even be requested. This means that documentation like that of the so-called 23-F coup would not be declassified, initially, until 2031, which is the 50th anniversary of the armed uprising, but there is no doubt that this period will be exceeded by giving it an extra push of at least a decade. In this regard, a decision by the Congress of Deputies to give the green light to declassification would obviously alter the calendar.
It is striking, although not surprising, how the impact of this news, which thoroughly shakes the foundations of the Spanish Transition, has been downplayed in the printed newspapers and even on television. The regime of 1978 is clearly not prepared to leave any loopholes for the deterioration of the monarchy, since although the figure who comes off worst is Juan Carlos I, it is obvious that it also ends up raising the issue of the functioning of the institution and, by extension, the direction of the Spanish state and its parliamentary monarchy regime. The fact that Tejero is a coup plotter and has a far-right ideology does not make him a liar. And nothing would bring more transparency than declassification, which many people would not like, but which we will be unlikely to see in the lifetime of the king emeritus.
The point is that Spain's so-called state sewers - it's illegal "plumbers" - not only use characters like ex-police commissioner José Manuel Villarejo for jobs that have to be kept from public knowledge, like everything related to Operation Catalonia. There are also other destabilizing and clearly anti-democratic sewers which, just as they plan the GAL death squads, carry out rescue operations like that of the 23-F. It's another matter altogether if many people simply prefer to live in complete ignorance and not stir up the past, since in the declassification of the coup, it might turn out there is more than one bad guy in the movie.