Seventy-four-year-old Colonel Amadeo Martínez Inglés certainly looks every bit the retired military officer as he marches in his uniform towards the little crowd outside the court. But he doesn’t sound like a typical army colonel. “The Third Republic will soon be born in Spain!” he declaims to the applause of his gathered supporters before entering the Audiencia Nacional, the high court that deals with terrorists, international gangsters and drugs traffickers, to face a 15-month prison sentence for his insults against the king.
The colonel accuses the king of being at the centre of a ring of corrupt officials, of defrauding public funds for his sexual adventures, and most seriously, of himself being behind the 23 February 1981 coup d’etat attempt by Antonio Tejero, the resolution of which saw the king saluted worldwide as a hero of democracy. All these accusations are delivered in a heated rhetoric dripping with contempt and disgust at the king himself and the institutions he represents.
Read the full article, in English, here.
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