The former mayor of Barcelona and president of the municipal group Trias por Barcelona, ??Xavier Trias, said this Monday that he believes that “the socialists were behind” the attempted coup d’état of 23-F.

In an interview on SER Catalunya, Trias maintained that “no one can believe” that the person responsible for 23-F was Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero.

“There was a coup d’état on 23-F that no one can believe that it was a coup d’état by Mr. Tejero. Maybe there are still some innocent people who believe that. I think the socialists were behind 23-F,” stated the former mayor of the Catalan capital.

For Trias, these facts are “evident” and the socialists “know it”: “They will say that I am gagá, that I am old, but it is evident.”

According to the former mayor, 23-F served to stop autonomous development: “23-F ended, the government was changed and the first thing the Socialist Party did was the LOAPA,” he added.

In a message on his Twitter account, the deputy of the PSC in the Parliament Ferran Pedret has responded to Trias, accusing him of “infamy”.

“Socialists who ran to hide or destroy the files of the militants, with fresh memories of Chile’s 1973. Others who showed up at the town halls to defend them. Grandparents who offered to pick up the militants’ kids just in case. The infamy of Trias, exposed”, he pointed out.

The acting Minister of the Presidency, Relations with the Cortes and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños, pointed out this Monday that the statements of the former mayor of Barcelona “have no historical or factual basis.”

In a media address before visiting an exhibition on the democratic memory of Europe through women in the Archive of the Crown of Aragon, Bolaños emphasized that “the socialist deputies were hostages, like all the deputies of the Congress of the Deputies, in that coup d’état of 23-F.”

“I want to express respect for the political figure of Xavier Trias, even though he makes statements of this type that have no historical or factual basis,” added the minister.