Antonio Tejero Molina (30 April 1932 – 25 February 2026) was a Spanish lieutenant colonel of the Guardia Civil. He was the most prominent figure in the failed coup d'état against the newly democratic Spanish government on 23 February 1981 when he stormed the Congress of Deputies with 200 armed Civil Guards. For this reason, he was sentenced to thirty years imprisonment for the crime of consummated military rebellion, with the aggravating circumstance of recidivism; he had previously been arrested for his involvement in the failed coup attempt during Operation Galaxia in 1978.
Early life
Tejero was born on 30 April 1932 in Alhaurín el Grande, province of Málaga, Spain. His parents had moved there shortly before Tejero was born, and his father began working at a military outpost. The family spent the early years of the Spanish Civil War there. For his accomplishments in the Basque Country, and in combating the ETA, he was named Chief of the Planning Staff of the Civil Guard in Madrid. But during his career, he had also begun to accumulate a record of dissent. ETA militants would rig bombs to Ikurriñas; when police officers tried to remove the flag, which had been banned in 1938 during the Franco regime, the bombs exploded. This killed several Guardia Civil officers. When the ban on the Ikurriña was revoked in 1977, Tejero sent a telegram to Madrid asking if he should pay honors to the Ikurriña. In Málaga, he ordered or took a major part in a military deployment around the town during the seizure of a flag.
The trial against the plotters began on 19 February 1982 and Tejero was sentenced by the Supreme Court on 22 April 1983 to 30 years in prison for consummated military rebellion and the aggravating circumstance of recidivism. An archconfraternity requested his pardon, but despite having the support of the Supreme Court, the government rejected it on the grounds that Tejero had not repented, so he remained in prison until 1993 when he was granted parole.
Life after jail sentence
Held in jail after the coup attempt, Tejero founded the Spanish Solidarity party to run in the 1982 general election; if he was elected he would gain parliamentary immunity. With a nationwide total of votes (0.14% of votes cast), the party failed to obtain parliamentary representation. Tejero was released from jail on 3 December 1996, the last of the coup participants released, having served 15 years in the Alcalá de Henares military prison. He took up residence in Torre del Mar in the province of Málaga. In 2006, he wrote to the newspaper ', calling for a referendum on Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) proposals granting a new measure of autonomy to Catalonia. In 2006, Tejero attended a homage to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who had died. In 2009, Tejero's son, Ramón Tejero Díez, wrote to the conservative newspaper ABC describing his father as a sincere religious man who was trying to do his best for Spain.
As of 2018, Tejero was residing in Madrid and Torre del Mar, and was painting portraits and landscapes. On 23 February 2018, he attended the funeral of the 1st Duchess of Franco. On 29 May 2018, a rumour of Tejero's death was spread and hailed by Spanish military veterans and supporters, but was quickly refuted by his son.
On 24 October 2019, at the age of 87, Tejero took part in a protest against the exhumation of the remains of Francisco Franco from the Valley of the Fallen memorial site and their reburial in Madrid.
Personal life and death
Tejero married Carmen Díez Pereira, a teacher and daughter of a civil guard, with whom he had six children. Some of his children and sixteen grandchildren are civil guards or are married to military officers.
On 23 October 2025, news spread again that Tejero had died. His son denied Tejero's death while acknowledging that he was hospitalized in a critical condition.
Tejero died at his home in Alzira in the province of Valencia, on 25 February 2026, at the age of 93, on the same day that the Spanish government declassified documents regarding his failed coup. His ashes were transferred to a church in Torre del Mar.