The Government already has everything ready for a Defense and Foreign Affairs meeting on 23-F. There are no recordings, there are no sound files, but there are transcripts of conversations and “maybe some images,” according to the minister spokesperson, Elma Sáiz. There are 153 “documentary units”, and everything will be made public
The Executive does not want to clarify whether these documents are going to represent an important change in the official story of 23-F, and did not answer an express question about the possibility of altering the image of the role of the emeritus king, Juan Carlos I, in , a person very close to the monarch.
But he is confident that this declassification, which he defines as a historic decision that puts an end to the “anomaly” of Spain keeping these highly relevant documents secret 45 years later – something that countries in the Western environment and governed by an 8 do not do – will at least serve to fight against “hoaxes”, especially from the extreme right, as the spokesperson explained.
“We know that the algorithm has a lot of power to spread hoaxes, but with this declassification we at least prevent the extreme right from continuing to use hoaxes to spread theories and to misinform, said Sáiz after a Council of Ministers that had this issue as its star topic.
The Government maintains that not even the president knows about the documentation, which is being managed by Defense, Interior and Foreign professionals, where the bulk of the documentation was kept. Sánchez did inform King Felipe VI that this declassification was going to take place, in which there is great interest to see if it reveals anything about what happened that afternoon in Zarzuela, the palace where King Juan Carlos was, and which many military commanders called to find out if the head of the State and the armies endorsed this coup instigated by the Armada. That is why it was decisive that in Zarzuela, a way of pointing out that the king was not behind it. However, the hours it took Juan Carlos I to come out to condemn the coup and the movements of those first moments have always generated suspicions about the true initial intention of the king, and that is why this declassification has always been demanded from the left and there are important expectations about it.
The Government does not want to clarify more at the moment, with the pretext that the ministers do not know the documents, only the officials who guard them, but it does vindicate this decision and trusts that it will not be limited to 23-F, but that they can declassify other documents from key periods in the turbulent Spanish history. But for that, as the spokesperson explained, it would be necessary to finally approve the official secrets law that has been dormant in Congress for years. The Executive trusts that there is now consensus to do so. The PNV, which has historically claimed this issue, has a registered reform of some points of the ’68 law, but the Government registered another with a complete reform, a new law, which had some limitations that the nationalists did not like. The discussion stayed there and has not been reactivated. Now the Executive will try to revive it, although it will be very difficult for it to have the votes of the PP, which does not want to know anything about agreements with the Government, and therefore will have to negotiate it within the majority, something always complex because several groups do not share the limits that the ministry of Félix Bolaños, who leads this norm, wants to set.
The spokesperson admitted that until this Tuesday, when the Council of Ministers decided to declassify, Spain “was experiencing a democratic anomaly”, because several neighboring countries such as Germany or the United States had already declassified issues related to 23-F while Italy or Greece have declassified others related to Nazi crimes, Greece. “This Government thus corroborates a clear commitment to memory. This is the only Government that has done something like this, and now we are going to seek consensus to change the law so that this type of declassifications occur automatically and decisions like this cease to be an exception and become the norm,” he stated.
