The Spanish defence ministry affirms that the recent revelations about military personnel proclaiming far-right views, proposing a coup and "to shoot 26 million Spaniards" are not relevant to the Spanish armed forces because those responsible are no longer active. However, the newspaper Público has learned that, as well as these chat groups made up of military officers in the reserve, there are similar groups of active army officers and soldiers where baseless accusations, mockery and ridicule are hurled at senior members of the Spanish government. In one such group, to which the newspaper has had access, some members took part in a discussion specifically defending the reserve high commanders who made the call for an uprising and spoke idly of millions of deaths.
The conversation about the group of retired military figures who shared their "daydream" also took place on WhatsApp, and it began, according to Público, when a person identifying as 'Soldier Alberto Vázquez' gave a link to a fake news story stating that the mole - who revealed the contents of the "coup" chat was connected to Spanish deputy PM and Podemos party leader, Pablo Iglesias - something that the soldier who broke some of the information, lieutenant colonel José Antonio Domínguez, has publicly denied. Vázquez, according to the newspaper, assumed that the digital report was true and warned the rest of his WhatsApp group about a possible traitor among them, a group of non-commissioned officers who trained together in the Fuencarral Academy, in Madrid, during the eighties.
In addition, Vázquez justified the positions of the retired commanders which had been expressed in the earlier chat. "I trust that in this chat there will be no treacherous S.o.B. who will betray his peers in the worst style, like that other individual without values did. A private chat, where anyone can say what they want, without anyone having to ask for favours or to fear arbitrary action from anyone, exercising their individual rights and liberties, which have nothing to do with the respect we as soldiers hold for the Constitution and the laws, not like this mob which twists them as they please to see if they can put an end to the nation and the king," writes Vázquez in the chat of the Ninth Year Artillery Graduates, to which Público has had access.
After this, a group member identified as "Soldier Membrilla" sends a sticker showing his approval: a soldier giving the thumbs-up.
This provokes another response from Vázquez. "I wonder how can someone who is a soldier, high-ranking, minimally educated and experienced, in his sixties, be a communist? Knowing that communism is the political system invented by the most genocidal man, the one has most annihilated human liberty, the most opposed to God and men, that human beings have ever seen?" Then, according to the newspaper, other soldiers join the conversation and share Vázquez's criticism of the whistleblower and his support for the retired officers' group. And, according to the newspaper, they say that the group of the "shooting 26 million people" was expressing "the feelings of many."
In addition, this group of 121 officers and soldiers also shares links to websites making calls to overthrow the current Spanish government.