Unión Militar Democrática (the Democratic Military Union) was a clandestine Spanish organisation of military officers in the late- and post-

Francoist Spain Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spai ...

era.

History

In the final years of the rule of

Francisco Franco Francisco Franco Bahamonde (; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War ...

, there was uncertainty as to the path the country would follow after the ''

caudillo A ''caudillo'' ( , ; osp, cabdillo, from Latin , diminutive of ''caput'' "head") is a type of personalist leader wielding military and political power. There is no precise definition of ''caudillo'', which is often used interchangeably with " ...

s demise. Many members of the officer corps willingly accepted the prospect of a transition to a new constitutional order, but others, mainly in the army, who still identified with Franco's ideological notions, regarded democratisation as a betrayal of the nationalist victory in the

civil war A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

that ended in 1939.Spain: The Military in Political Life
Country Studies Series of the

Federal Research Division The Federal Research Division (FRD) is the research and analysis unit of the United States Library of Congress. The Federal Research Division provides directed research and analysis on domestic and international subjects to agencies of the Unite ...

of the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

Campuzano, Francisco. ''L'élite franquiste et la sortie de la dictature'' ("The Francoist elite and the exit from the dictatorship"), L'Harmattan, Paris, 1997, (in French) In 1972, a small,

secret society A secret society is a club or an organization whose activities, events, inner functioning, or membership are concealed. The society may or may not attempt to conceal its existence. The term usually excludes covert groups, such as intelligence a ...

of younger army officers was formed around a

platform Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

of common objectives: Unifying the three armed-forces ministries; restricting the scope of the military justice system; reducing the length of military service for the population which was, at the time,

obligatory An obligation is a course of action that someone is required to take, whether legal or moral. Obligations are constraints; they limit freedom. People who are under obligations may choose to freely act under obligations. Obligation exists when ther ...

; the imposition of restrictions on the

military intelligence Military intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions. This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a ...

system; restricting the authority of the captains general of the nine military regions of the country; etc. The group grew relatively quickly, its members numbering between two and three hundred military officers by 1974. Events in Portugal, where, on 25 April 1974, the military forces staged a coup that effectively returned democracy to the country, boosted participation in the secret organisation of Spanish military officers, which adopted the name ''Unión Militar Democrática'' (Democratic Military Union).

Reaction of the regime

The existence of the organisation quickly became known to the SECED, the intelligence service of the Spanish state, and nine of its members were arrested in

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

in July 1975, put on trial and condemned in 1976 to prison sentences of up to eight years. One of the arrested was founding member Major Luis Otero who got the heaviest sentence but was pardoned under the 1977 Amnesty Law. Notably, one of the arrested members of UMD had been born inside the citadel of Alcázar during its protracted siege by Republican forces, in the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...

. In a 2010 interview to Spanish newspaper ''

El País ''El País'' (; ) is a Spanish-language daily newspaper in Spain. ''El País'' is based in the capital city of Madrid and it is owned by the Spanish media conglomerate PRISA. It is the second most circulated daily newspaper in Spain . ''El Pa ...

'', one of the founding members said that he and his fellow officers had contacted "as many people as possible" within the military in order to spread their ideas, concluding "We obviously talked to the wrong people because the intelligence services found out about us immediately."

Dissolution

The organisation declared itself dissolved in June 1977, on the occasion of the first free, democratic elections to be held in Spain since 1935.

Legacy

Most of the reforms outlined in the political platform of UDM were eventually, though gradually, adopted after Franco's death by the democratic governments. In 2008, Spanish judge

Baltasar Garzón Baltasar Garzón Real (; born 26 October 1955) is a former Spanish judge. Garzón formerly served on Spain's central criminal court, the ''Audiencia Nacional'', and was the examining magistrate of the ''Juzgado Central de Instrucción No. 5'', ...

opened a far-reaching investigation into the disappearances of Republicans in Spain during the Franco era, also ordering the opening of alleged

mass grave A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact ...

s, including one believed to contain the remains of the poet

Federico García Lorca Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca (5 June 1898 – 19 August 1936), known as Federico García Lorca ( ), was a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblemat ...

."Spain: Investigation launched into Franco's crimes"
World Socialist Web Site, 3 November 2008 The investigation caused political turmoil, with people opposed to it claiming that the 1977 amnesty covered all the crimes committed by either side during the Civil War. One of the founding members of UDM, retired colonel Julián Delgado, who, after the transition to democracy, was appointed head of the '' Guardia Urbana'' (the city police force) in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

, publicly objected to the investigation, because it would be "absurd to stir up pain." Delgado warned that support for the victims of the Civil War and their families should be done "without the desire for revenge" since this "does no good to democracy.""Digging up past atrocities"
, InterPress Service, 9 October 2008 In 2010, Defence Minister

Carme Chacón Carme Maria Chacón Piqueras (; March 13, 1971April 9, 2017) was a Spanish lawyer, lecturer and politician who was minister of Defence from 2008 to 2011 in the cabinet led by Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Member of Spa ...

, representing the Spanish government, awarded the Military Merit Cross to 14 members of UMD, three of them posthumously."Former military rebels receive recognition"
''The News'', 17 February 2010

References

Bibliography

*Fernández López, Javier.
Militares contra Franco : historia de la Unión Militar Democrática
', Mira Editores June 2002,

External links

"Ex oficiales de la UMD: el duro paso de los cuarteles a la vida civil"
("Former officers of the UMD: the hard way from the barracks to civilian life"), ''

'', 27 July 1980 {{in lang, es Military history of Spain Francoist Spain Spanish Civil War