Javier Cercas - The Anatomy of a Moment

Footnote.For information on Operación Mister see Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante , pp. 223–232, and Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez, 23-F. La conjura de los necios , pp. 176–186.

Footnote.The AOME member is Captain Diego Camacho; Jesús Palacios develops this thesis in 23-F: El coup del CESID , pp. 230–231.

‘. . it’s very likely [. .] that in the days before the coup Cortina turned into a sort of adjutant of Armada’s. .’Some authors maintain that it was Cortina who personally informed the US Ambassador and Papal nuncio of the imminence of the coup; see Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez, 23-F. La conjura de los necios , pp. 191–198, or Palacios, 23-F: El golpe del CESID , pp. 344–347.

‘As I reconstruct it or imagine it. .’The version that Tejero gives of the conversation can be read in Merino, Tejero. 25 años después , pp. 232–236; that of Armada, in Al servicio de la Corona , pp. 242–243, and, in more detail, in Cuenca Toribio, Conversaciones con Alfonso Armada , pp. 84–90. There are credible reconstructions of what happened in Fernández López, Diecisiete horas y media , pp. 161–165; Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante , pp. 182–187; Pardo Zancada, 23-F. La pieza que falta , pp. 296–300; Cernuda, Jáuregui and Menéndez, 23-F. La conjura de los necios , pp. 152–159; or Palacios, 23-F: El golpe del CESID , pp. 410–415.

Footnote.Prieto and Barbería, El enigma del Elefante , pp. 185–186. Dr Echave’s testimony can be seen in the television report El 23-F desde dentro , directed by Joan Úbeda, produced in 2001 and given away with the newspaper Público , 23 February 2009. Juan de Arespacochaga is one of the people who claim to have had news of Armada’s government before the coup; a government in which, as he guessed from the start, ‘the person I most respect politically as do millions of Spaniards’ (he is undoubtedly referring to Manuel Fraga) would figure and, along with him ‘two more members of the commission that wrote the Constitution’; he also claims that a list of the prospective Cabinet was later circulated that included himself and other ‘personal exponents of service to Spain above parties and factions’. See Carta a unos capitanes , pp. 274–275.

Those who advance the theory of a deliberate delay in the broadcast of the royal message — though attributing it to different reasons and drawing different conclusions — go from Pedro de Silva ( Las fuerzas del cambio , Barcelona, Prensa Ibérica, 1996, p. 204) to Amadeo Martínez Inglés ( 23-F. El golpe que nunca existió , Madrid, Foca, 2001, pp. 145–148), by way of Ricardo de la Cierva ( El 23-F sin máscaras , Madrid, Fénix, 1999, p. 226).

The King’s message is in, for example, Fernández López, Diecisiete horas y media , p. 166; as well as in Paul Preston, Juan Carlos: A People’s King , pp. 481–482.

Part Five. Viva Italia!

Adolfo Suárez, ‘Yo disiento’, El País , 4.6.1982.

The dialogue between Suárez and General de Santiago is taken from Victoria Prego, Diccionario de la transición , p. 557. The incident between Suárez and Tejero is mentioned by, among others, Urbano, Con la venia. . , p. 183, and Charles Powell, Adolfo Suárez , p. 180; José Oneto recreates it novelistically in La noche de Tejero , p. 195.

The anecdote of what happened during the National Defence Council meeting is told in Charles Powell, Adolfo Suárez , p. 181.

José Ortega y Gasset, Mirabeau o el político , in Obras completas , vol. IV, Madrid, Taurus, 2005, pp. 195–223.

Isaiah Berlin, The Sense of Reality , London, Chatto & Windus, 1996, p. 32. Paris Match , 28.8.1976, quoted by García Abad, Adolfo Suárez , p. 354.

‘Some of Suárez’s apologists. .’I’m referring to, for example, Josep Melià, who in La trama de los escribanos del agua , pp. 49–56, recounts Suárez’s early days in Madrid; in the same book, p. 49, he also tells the anecdote about Suárez with the father of his future wife.

See Gregorio Morán, Adolfo Suárez , from p. 105.

Franco’s comment to his personal physician, Vicente Pozuelo, does not come from his own book, Los 476 días de Franco , Barcelona, Planeta, 1980, but rather that of Luis Herrero, El ocaso del régimen , Madrid, Temas de Hoy, 1995, in whom Pozuelo confided it. Herrero claims Franco’s opinion ‘was perhaps due to the fact that not long before the intelligence services had delivered to El Pardo a copy of the notes that Suárez — like many other young politicians of the regime — had sent to the Zarzuela summarizing his points of view on the pending political transition’.

The King’s comment is from July 1972, and the person who heard him say it was his biographer, José Luis Navas; see García Abad, Adolfo Suárez , p. 70.

Suárez is quoted in Morán, Adolfo Suárez , p. 261. [Puerta de Hierro is one of Madrid’s most exclusive neighbourhoods and the Colegio Nuestra Señora del Pilar is one of its best schools, with a long list of prominent alumni.]

Suárez’s account can be read in Victoria Prego, Adolfo Suárez , pp. 26–27; Luis Herrero gives more details about the same episode in Los que le llamábamos Adolfo , pp. 135–138.

The cartoon by Forges was in Cambio 16 , 12–18 July 1976, p. 18. The quote from Le Figaro , in Sánchez Navarro, La transición española en sus documentos , p. 287. The quote from El País , from the article ‘Nombres para una crisis’, 6 July 1976.

Machiavelli, De principatibus , p. 289. Suárez is quoted in Sánchez Navarro, La transición española en sus documentos , p. 288. The second Suárez quote, Adolfo Suárez, Fue posible la concordia , p. 26.

[Guerrilleros de Cristo Rey (literally ‘Warriors of Christ the King’) was a paramilitary group that operated in the late 1970s.]

Miguel Primo de Rivera is quoted in Sánchez Navarro, La transición española en sus documentos , p. 355. As well as Primo de Rivera, the Law for Political Reform was defended in the Cortes by Fernando Suárez — who steered the proposal through — Noel Zapico, Belén Landábury and Lorenzo Olarte.

The New York Times and Le Monde headlines from 19 November 1976 are quoted in Abella, Adolfo Suárez , p. 149.

‘. . he declared himself a Social Democrat to his former Deputy Prime Minister. .’See Alfonso Osorio, Trayectoria de un ministro de la Corona , pp. 327–328. The anecdote about the argument over which part of the chamber the UCD deputies should occupy is recounted in Martín Villa, Al servicio del Estado , p. 82, and Herrero de Miñón, Memorias de estío , p. 208.

The editorial ran under the headline ‘Desorden autonómico, desorden partidario’, El País , 30 December 1980.

For Rossellini’s opinion of General Della Rovere , see Ángel Quintana, Roberto Rossellini , Madrid, Cátedra, 1995, p. 187. ‘It is reasonable to surmise that any of the young Francoist politicians [. .] could have done what Suárez did. .’One of those young politicians, Alfonso Osorio, admitted in 2006: ‘In order to carry out the political transition [. .] someone was needed who had sufficient intelligence, adequate knowledge, capacity for dialogue, infinite patience, exquisite manners and overwhelming sympathy, and none of us politicians in 1976 had all those qualities together [. .] We had more than enough presumptuousness, arrogance, elitism and prejudices: precisely what Adolfo Suárez didn’t have’, ‘Prologue’ to Manuel Ortiz, Adolfo Suárez y el bienio prodigioso , Barcelona, Planeta, 2006, p. 20.