The Spanish Military Association (AME) published a manifesto yesterday in which a group of half a hundred retired high-ranking officers call on active members of the armed forces to remove the president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez. A call for a coup d’état – although without saying so expressly – to “prevent the public” from the “gravity of the current situation”.
Military sources explain that the manifesto has been being forged for weeks among its promoters, who yesterday used the AME website to make it public, but without the identities of the signatories. However, La Vanguardia has had access to the list of 56 military commands that – for now – have adhered to the text. All of them are retired, so the disciplinary regime of the armed forces cannot be applied to them. Of course, they sign the manifesto – with first and last names – identifying themselves with their military occupation.
It is headed by retired Major General Yago Fernández de Bobadilla Bufalá. There are two more generals of division: Antonio Valderrábano López and Luis Palacios Zuasti. From here, and going down the ladder, there are also brigadier generals, colonels, lieutenant colonels, commanders and captains. The largest group of signatories is made up of the colonels, there are about twenty of them. There is no one from the Navy.
Some of the retired military who signed the coup document were part of the “La XIX del Aire” chat, in which it was commented that there was “no other choice” but to start “shooting 26 million sons of bitches”. That transpired in 2020 and it was the Ministry of Defence, led by Margarita Robles, that brought the chat of retired soldiers to the attention of the Prosecutor’s Office. The public ministry ended up filing the proceedings considering that the content was of a private nature. Yesterday, after the coup manifesto was made public, this newspaper contacted the department headed by Robles and received silence in response.
In the text, dated the day Sánchez left Congress to be sworn in as president, the Francoist military declares “shocked by what is happening in Spain”, denounces the “harassment of the rule of law, since the executive power occupies the majority of judicial bodies”, which “nullifies the independence of the judiciary and the separation of powers”. And from here they make their particular diagnosis of the country’s situation; from the appointment of the president of the Constitutional Court to Spain’s turnaround in the Sahara issue, through the amnesty law and the transfer by the Ministry of Defense of a firing range in Navarre.
The promoters of the document denounce that the Constitutional Court is now composed of magistrates who have held “relevant political positions” in the Spanish government, “a fact that nullifies” the neutrality of the body of guarantees. They do not mention the fact that the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) continues to have a conservative color after five years with the expired mandate, due to the Popular Party’s refusal to renew it. The Attorney General of the State says that it is “prone to the permanent assumption of the dictates” of the executive
A good part of the manifesto is dedicated to the Catalan question. They criticize the pardons granted by the Spanish Government to the leaders of the process, whom it calls “criminals of the coup d’état of October 2017”. He also has criticism for the abolition of the crime of sedition and the reform of embezzlement, but especially for the future amnesty law, which they say has no place in the Constitution because, in his opinion, it will eliminate equality before the law “for the sole personal interest” of Sánchez to be sworn in as President of the Government. This, they say, “leaves the rule of law defenseless because it annuls the sentences and procedures in force of the criminals who were the protagonists of the aforementioned coup”.
For this reason, they encourage their active military colleagues to dismiss the president of the Spanish Government in accordance with article 8.1 of the Constitution, which states that the armed forces have the mission of “defending the constitutional order”. which they see in “serious danger due to the lack of judicial independence”. They ignore article 97, in which it is embodied that it is the Government that directs the military administration and the defense of the State.
They defend that after the impeachment of Pedro Sánchez, elections should be held, “which we put to the consideration of the Spanish citizens in order to prevent it.
