When Spain's parliament was stormed
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2021
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In February 1981 armed Civil Guards tried to take control of the Spanish parliament. For 18 hours they held 350 politicians hostage in the debating chamber. One of those politicians was a young Socialist MP called Joaquin Almunia.
Photo: The leader of the coup attempt, Lt Col Antonio Tejero, on the speaker's platform (AFP/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. This is the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Claire Bowes. |
| 0:47.0 | Today I'm taking you back to Spain in February 1981, just six years after the end of decades of military rule under General Franco. |
| 0:57.4 | And in the Spanish Parliament in Madrid, 350 MPs have gathered to vote in a new Prime Minister. |
| 1:05.0 | It was a very important day because the appointment, the vote of a new Prime Minister is always a very important thing and in particular when our |
| 1:16.0 | democratic institutions were still very weak. |
| 1:18.3 | Joaquin Almunia was a member of the Socialist Party. |
| 1:22.1 | He was just 32 and had been an MP for two years. |
| 1:26.0 | I was sitting in the left side of the room indeed, in the second row of the socialist MPs. |
| 1:35.0 | Suddenly we'll hear some noises. |
| 1:39.0 | We were not aware of what kind of reason was creating these noises. |
| 1:46.2 | And at one moment, one Wardiathibil, Civil Guard, appeared with a gun in his hand. And we immediately recognize the Hero that was a well-known pushist that had been arrested two years before so he was a very well known |
| 2:17.0 | extreme right member of the civil guard and we immediately understood that this was an attempt to stop the democratic |
| 2:26.2 | process and we immediately started to think what will be the solution or the conclusion of this very serious attempt against |
| 2:36.4 | the democracy. |
| 2:37.4 | Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tehero had planned a puch or coup two years earlier to reverse Spain's transition to democracy, |
| 2:46.1 | but the plan had been discovered and Tahiro was jailed for seven months. |
| 2:50.4 | For Tahiro and his sympathizers, democracy meant disunity and disintegration. |
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