The lieutenant colonel of the Civil Guard who became the symbol of the failed coup d’état of February 23, 1981 with his entry, gun in hand, into the chamber of the Congress of Deputies shouting “everyone quiet!”, died this Wednesday at the age of 93. The announcement of his death was brought forward by the family’s lawyer, Luis Felipe Utrera Molina, who has spread a message from one of the sons of the former civil guard. “I want to inform you with deep pain that today, February 25, 2026, my father, Antonio Tejero Molina, has died 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.”
After being sentenced to 30 years in prison as one of the main instigators of that attempt, he had been living for years in his native province, Malaga, and his public appearances had become increasingly sparse in recent years. One of the last was on October 24, 2019, when he went to Madrid, to attend the reburial of the remains of the dictator Francisco Franco after his departure from the Cuelgamuros Valley. Become a symbol for the most nostalgic far-right, Tejero was the last of the three main convicts of the failed coup d’état who was still alive after the death of generals Jaime Milans del Bosch in 1997 and Alfonso Armada in 2013.
The photograph of Tejero with his tricorn hat on, gun in hand and shouting his famous “sit down, damn!” in the Congressional rostrum it is the most recognizable image of 23-F. The soldier was one of the ringleaders of that coup when he entered the Lower House with two hundred civil guards while the investiture session of Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo as President of the Government was being held. The shots at the ceiling of the chamber, which still bears the marks of the impacts, were the prelude to an episode that kept the deputies and the entire Government kidnapped for 18 hours. The discrepancies those hours between Tejero himself and General Armada regarding the composition of the government that was to emerge from the attempt accelerated the failure of the coup.
Tejero was tried along with 32 other people for that attempt and sentenced in the first instance and later by the Supreme Court to 30 years in prison for a crime of consummated military rebellion and for being one of the three material, direct and personal executors of the events, along with Milans del Bosch – who took the tanks to the streets of Valencia – and Armada. Tejero served time in several military facilities, he asked for a pardon through a brotherhood, which the Supreme Court ruled in favor, but the Government denied it. He obtained the third degree of prison or semi-freedom regime in 1993 and was granted conditional freedom in 1996. During his time in provisional prison he created a political party, Spanish Solidarity, which participated in the 1982 general elections with the slogan “Enter with Tejero in Parliament!” Although it presented lists in 32 provinces, it only obtained 28,451 votes, 0.14%.
After leaving prison, he dedicated most of his time to painting, although on occasion he participated in initiatives of a marked political nature. Thus, in November 2012 he filed a complaint against Artur Mas, then president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, for conspiracy and attempted sedition for his independence plans in Catalonia. In 2023 he did the same against Pedro Sánchez for his investiture negotiations with nationalist parties. That year, in a conversation with Tejero explained his reasons: “I don’t see any social reaction to the atrocities that this man called Pedro does” and reaffirmed his old convictions: “I would like there to be a military government that would put things in their place,” although he claimed to accept the “PP as a lesser evil.”
One of his last public appearances was in 2019, at the burial of Francisco Franco’s body in the Mingorrubio cemetery, in El Pardo (Madrid), after the dictator’s remains were removed from the Cuelgamuros Valley basilica. The former civil guard tried, without success, to cross a police cordon that surrounded the access to the pantheon where the dictator was buried. The last news about him occurred last March, when his name appeared among the signatories of a statement from the self-proclaimed Platform 2025 that began with “we, Spaniards grateful to Francisco Franco…”. The platform intended to counter-program, with talks and tribute events, the calendar of a hundred events organized by the Government on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the dictator’s death which took place last year and the beginning of the transition to democracy against which Tejero took up arms.
23-F had not been, however, the first time that the lieutenant colonel had been involved in events of a political nature. His first incident with public significance occurred on the occasion of the decriminalization of the use of the ikurriña in January 1977. Tejero, stationed at that time in San Sebastián, sent a telegram to the then Minister of the Interior, Rodolfo Martín Villa, in which he showed his strong disagreement with the measure. As a result of this incident, Tejero was transferred to Malaga as head of the Civil Guard Command.
Months later, in October of the same year, the soldier once again occupied space in the pages of the newspapers when, at the head of a company of the armed institute, he prevented the holding of a previously authorized political demonstration. That day, ETA had murdered the president of the Bizkaia Provincial Council. “Today is a day of mourning in Spain and no one is demonstrating here,” he told the protesters. Interior removed his command and arrested him at his home. Less than a year later, the Civil Guard command published in the newspaper The Impartial an open letter to King Juan Carlos in which he was openly dissatisfied with the Constitution that would be approved by a majority in a referendum in December 1978. Tejero was charged with that letter.
However, his most serious episode before February 23 was another coup attempt: the so-called Operation Galaxia, in which he and army captain Ricardo Sáenz de Ynestrillas maintained contacts in the Galaxia cafeteria, in Madrid, to prepare a coup on November 17, 1978. The operation plan included the occupation of the Moncloa Palace, where the Government would be meeting in the Council of Ministers, the arrest of the entire Cabinet and the petition the King to form a Government of national salvation. The plot was discovered thanks to the testimony of some officers with whom the lieutenant colonel and Ynestrillas had contacted and who refused to participate in the plot. The penalties imposed for that attempt were minimal: seven months in prison for Tejero and six months and one day for the other soldier involved.
