The general who led the coup manifesto alleges that it was manipulated

Major General Yago Fernández de Bobadilla, the military officer who headed the list of fifty chiefs and officers, all of them retired, who signed the coup manifesto released last week through the Association of Spanish Military (AME), denounces that he has been manipulated and that the text he signed did not include the call for the Army to carry out a coup d'état and remove President Pedro Sánchez.

In a letter sent to this newspaper, the general explains that the promoter of the document was not him, but Captain José Manuel Adán Carmona, who abandoned his military career a few years after starting it and became a financial inspector, becoming deputy director general of the Ministry of Economy. It so happens that this retired captain, who was part of the chat in which there was talk in 2020 of "shooting 26 million Spaniards", has also been the promoter of the missives that were sent that year to the King to skip his constitutional obligations.

The general explains that José Manuel Adán sent him "a version of the manifesto that did not contain that phrase in its last paragraph." "This person, subsequently and without obtaining my permission and authorization, modified the manifesto by adding the aforementioned phrase," he denounces.

The added sentence read: "This group of former members of the Armed Forces, now in retirement, concerned about the future of Spain, ask those responsible for the defence of the constitutional order, the dismissal of the President of the Government and the calling of general elections".

"I would like to make crystal clear," the general says in his letter, "my categorical rejection of that phrase, which does nothing more than request the Armed Forces to commission a coup d'état, a matter that I strongly reject and that goes totally against my democratic values, which coincide with those of the vast majority of Spanish society. These are values and principles that I maintained as a cornerstone during my years of service in the Air Force and that I uphold and defend today with equal or, if possible, greater impetus than when I wore the military uniform," the general adds.

"It is one thing to publicly express our disagreement with recent events, and quite another is that the promoter of this document has manipulated its content without informing the signatories (at least me), making it appear that what was requested was the dismissal of the president of the Government by the Armed Forces," Concludes.

Among other assignments, Yago Fernández de Bobadilla — one of the three major generals who signed the manifesto — was director of operations and engineering at NETMA, the NATO agency that managed the Eurofighterand Tornado fighters. The Ministry of Defence did not want to comment on the letter, arguing that, since all the signatories were retired, they had disassociated themselves from the Armed Forces and the military disciplinary code could not be applied to them. Other sources, however, argued that the Defense Ministry should modify the legislation to deprive the right to wear the uniform and expel from the Order of St. Hermenegild those who, with their conduct, damage the image of the Armed Forces.

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