Javier Cercas - The Anatomy of a Moment

Michel de Montaigne, ‘Of Utility and Honesty’, Essays of Montaigne, vol. 7 , trans. Charles Cotton, revised by William Carew Hazlett, New York, Edwin C. Hill, 1910, p. 1181. Max Weber, ‘Politics as a vocation’, Essays in Sociology , p. 164.

See Adolfo Suárez, Fue posible la concordia , p. 331. The anecdote about the safe in Suárez’s office comes from Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, Memoria viva de la transición , pp. 187–188.

‘. . as he told the journalists. .’See Adolfo Suárez, Fue posible la concordia , p. 359.

See Adolfo Suárez, Fue posible la concordia , p. 293.

Fraga’s words were addressed to Ricardo de la Cierva, who reproduces them in La derecha sin remedio , Barcelona, Plaza y Janés, 1987, p. 391.

The anecdote about Suárez and Hernández Mancha is told by, for example, José Díaz Herrera and Isabel Durán, in Aznar. La vida desconocida de un presidente , Barcelona, Planeta, 1999, pp. 373–374.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, ‘Europe in Ruins’, Granta 33 , p. 138. Adolfo Suárez, ‘El amor y la experiencia del dolor’, prologue to Mariam Suárez, Diagnóstico: cáncer , Barcelona, Debolsillo/Galaxia Gutemberg, 2005, p. 13.

There is an account of Suárez’s last public appearance in Luis Herrero, Los que le llamábamos Adolfo , pp. 297–298.

‘. . it was Lieutenant Colonel Tejero’s fault that he was prosecuted. .’Tejero’s various declarations before the judge on Cortina’s implication are examined by Calderón and Ruiz Platero in Algo más que el 23-F , pp. 166–171. For information on the Jáudenes Report, see the note to p. 295. The contradictory versions of Rando Parra and Rubio Luengo, on the one hand, and Cortina, on the other, are also in Palacios, El coup del CESID , pp. 31–58, where abundant information on what happened within AOME after the coup can be found.

Santa Pau Corzán is quoted in Pardo Zancada, 23-F. La pieza que falta , p. 324.

The text of the conditions of capitulation of those who assaulted the Cortes, the so-called ‘Pacto del capó’, can be read in the documentary appendix included in the book by Pardo Zancada, 23-F. La pieza que falta , p. 425. (Pardo Zancada is the one who claims, by the way, that the surrender pact was signed ‘on the roof’ of one of his vehicles, and not, as Lieutenant Colonel Fuentes tends to say and to repeat — see El pacto del capó , p. 135– on the hood.) See also there (beginning on p. 412) the manifesto drawn up by the occupiers of the Cortes and sent to the press, the text of the final telex sent by the Zarzuela to Milans, and Milans’ edict annulling the edict that declared the state of emergency in Valencia or the message the Zarzuela sent to Pardo Zancada by way of San Martín to gain his surrender.

Epilogue: Prologue to a Novel

Martín Prieto, Técnica de un golpe de estado , p. 387. The articles collected in Martín Prieto’s book form an excellent account of what happened during the trial. See also the previously mentioned book by Milans’ defence lawyer, Santiago Segura, written in collaboration with the journalist Julio Merino, Jaque al Rey ; and those by José Oneto, La verdad sobre el caso Tejero , and Manuel Rubio, 23-F. El proceso , as well as the account by Urbano in Con la venia. . , pp. 311–357. ‘Less than a year later the final court. .’On the appeals and final sentences of the Supreme Court, see Fernández López, Diecisiete horas y media , pp. 195–198.

‘The coup d’état reinforced the Crown. .’See Santos Juliá, ‘El poder del Rey’, El País , 17.11.2007.

‘. . 23 February brought an end to the war.’The final date of the transition is a matter of dispute. In general, it tends to be said that democracy was consolidated in October 1982, with the Socialists coming to power, but Linz and Stepan — whose thesis is that a democracy has taken root when it becomes ‘the only game in town’ — consider that perhaps the key date is 23 February, or more precisely the moment of the imprisonment of General Milans del Bosch and Lieutenant Colonel Tejero when ‘there was never a politically significant movement in the military or in civil society to grant them clemency’; Problems of democratic transition and consolidation , pp. 108–110.

The bullfighter is Rafael de Paula, interviewed by Miguel Mora in El País , 31.3.2006; and the poet is José Bergamín, interviewed by Gonzalo Suárez, in La suela de mis zapatos , Barcelona, Seix Barral, 2006, p. 207. Alan Pauls, El factor Borges , Barcelona, Anagrama, 2004, p. 42.

Juan J. Linz, ‘La transición española en perspectiva comparada’, in J. Tusell and Álvaro Soto, eds., Historia de la transición , p. 21. Footnote.Odo Marquard, Filosofía de la compensación: estudios sobre antropología filosófica , Barcelona, Paidós, 2001, p. 41.

Javier Cercas was born in 1962. He is a novelist, short-story writer and columnist, whose books include Soldiers of Salamis (which sold more than a million copies worldwide, won six literary awards in Spain and was filmed by David Trueba), The Tenant and The Motive , and The Speed of Light . He taught at the University of Illinois in the late 1980s and for many years was a lecturer in Spanish literature at the University of Gerona. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages.

Anne McLean is the translator of works by Julio Cortázar, Héctor Abad, Ignacio Martínez de Pisón and Juan Gabriel Vásquez among others. She has twice won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize: in 2004 for Soldiers of Salamis by Javier Cercas (which also won the Valle Inclán Award) and in 2009 for The Armies by Evelio Rosero.