Spanish
Madrid.- Former lieutenant colonel of the Civil Guard Antonio Tejero, who led the attempted coup d'état of February 23, 1981 in Spain, died this Wednesday at the age of 93, confirmed the law firm representing his family.
The death of Tejero, which took place in the Valencian town of Alzira (east), occurred two days after the 45th anniversary of 23F and on the same day that the Spanish Government declassified the documents related to the coup d'état.You may be interested in: Two men shot dead in Newport News, VA
On October 23, 2025, the rumor circulated that he had died, as some media outlets even published, and the family came out to deny the death through a statement. Today, one of the former lieutenant colonel's sons issued a statement announcing his death."I want to inform you with deep sorrow that today, February 25, 2026, my father: Antonio Tejero Molina has passed away in the company of all his children. Having received the last sacraments and the Blessing of His Holiness Leo XIV. I give infinite thanks to God for his dedicated and generous life towards God, Spain and his family. I ask for a prayer for his eternal rest. Thank you," reads the statement.
Also from the law firm that represented him at present, the lawyer Ángeles Cañizares points out that his death occurred at 6:45 p.m. this Wednesday in Alzira (Valencia), where he resided with one of his daughters. Born in Alhaurín el Grande (Málaga, south) on April 30, 1932, he joined the Civil Guard, one of the two national security forces of Spain, in 1951. On February 23, 1981, he was the visible face of the attempted coup d'état, entering Congress and holding the Government and parliamentarians at gunpoint for hours, gathered in an investiture session to elect the President of the Government. The photograph of Tejero, pistol in hand, in the speaker's tribune, whose negative was clandestinely extracted from the chamber by two reporters from the EFE Agency, went around the world His shouts of "everyone down!" and "sit down, damn it!", while the Civil Guards accompanying him in the assault on Congress were shooting at the ceiling, illustrated a convulsive stage of the Spanish democratic consolidation. In the subsequent trial, held in 1982, he was expelled from the Civil Guard and sentenced to 30 years in prison for military rebellion. In 1996 he obtained parole. He was the last of those convicted for the coup d'état to leave prison, after spending fifteen years and nine months, most of them in the castle of Figueres (Girona), of which he was the only inmate.
