Plaza de las Cortes

The columns and main entrance lead to the home of the Congress of Deputies, one of the two chambers of the Spanish parliament. Laws are passed here, the budget is approved, and the government's work is overseen. Parliament came to this site in eighteen thirty-four, occupying the Convent of the Holy Spirit; the deteriorating building was later dismantled, and the current palace was opened under Isabella II in eighteen fifty.

On the evening of February twenty-third, nineteen eighty-one, a roll-call vote was taking place behind the columns of this facade. The deputies were deciding whether to entrust Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo with forming a government. The candidate had already lost the first round; he now needed to receive more votes in favor than against.

This vote explains the square's name. The Cortes Generales is the Spanish parliament, made up of the Congress of Deputies and the Senate; the Congress meets here. Deputies pass laws, approve the budget, oversee the government, and decide who can lead it. Parliamentarians occupied this site as early as eighteen thirty-four, when one of the chambers was housed in the Convent of the Holy Spirit. The old building was declared unsafe, dismantled, and replaced by the current palace, opened under Queen Isabella II in eighteen fifty.

During the vote, Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero of the Civil Guard burst into the chamber. He sought a military coup and brought about two hundred armed guards with him. Tejero ordered the deputies to lie on the floor. Deputy Prime Minister Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado, a former general, approached the captors and demanded that they stop the rebellion. Several people tried to knock him down, then pistols and automatic weapons were fired at the ceiling. The deputies and almost the entire leadership of the country were held at gunpoint for about sixteen hours.

The captors expected support from army commanders. In Valencia, General Jaime Milans del Bosch sent tanks into the streets, but most military districts did not join the coup. During the night, King Juan Carlos I, as commander in chief, ordered the army to obey the Constitution. In the morning, Tejero surrendered, and the chamber was freed.

Two days later, the deputies returned to the same seats and completed the interrupted procedure. Calvo-Sotelo received the confidence of the Congress and became President of the Government. Tejero was sentenced to thirty years in prison and expelled from the Civil Guard.

Bullet marks remain on the chamber's vaulted ceiling. When one bullet-pierced ventilation grille had to be removed during repairs, it was placed in a separate display case. Behind the facade on Plaza de las Cortes, deputies still vote in the chamber whose session Tejero tried to stop with weapons.