Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado

— instauration of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JUJEM);

His funeral was held at the Army Headquarters, attended by the King and Queen of Spain, and he was buried at the cemetery of Villaviciosa de Odón. There he remains at the side of his wife, Carmen Blasco, who died in 2010, whom he had married in 1938 and was the mother of his five children.

Fourteen months later, on December 15, 1995, ice on the road surface caused a fatal accident involving the car in which the eighty-three-year-old man was driving on his way to Barcelona to lecture at Ramon Llull University.

In 1994, the socialist government of Felipe González granted him the honorary rank of Captain General.

On September 1986, deeply touched by the death of close friend's son from a drug overdose, he sought the aid and financial help of several relevant businessmen and established the Antidrug Aid Foundation (FAD) that he chaired and ruled until the very day of his death.

After resigning his governmental duties and having also retired voluntarily from the Army, to exemplify incompatibility of politics and a military career,. he refrained from public activities till President Felipe González gave him a permanent seat on the State Council on May 28, 1984, where he chaired the First Section, which dealt with Defense Affairs.

Gutiérrez Mellado's most popular image is that at the Spanish Congress of the Deputies during the failed 1981 Spanish coup d'état, physically confronting the armed Guardia Civil troops led by Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero.

Also on that date, he was also called to take charge of the new department and he remained in office until September 23, 1979, when the Democratic Center Union (UCD) executive, Agustín Rodríguez Sahagún, took over, thus becoming the first civilian to chair a military department since 1939. Gutiérrez Mellado remained as Vice-President of the Government to coordinate Security and National Defense Affairs until President Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo's investiture in February 1981.

Facts lead one to think that he had been planning carefully, when presented the proper opportunity, to quickly reform and transform Franco's sclerotic Armed Forces in depth. That allowed him, with less than a hundred days in office, to outline a complete reform project to be submitted to the Military Affairs Governmental Commission's first meeting on January 4, 1977, chaired by President Suárez.

During his military career he served in relevant Army offices and he joined the political career in 1976, when the Prime Minister appointed him as First Deputy Prime Minister for Defence Affairs. From 1977 to 1979 he also served as Minister of Defence (the first since the Civil War).

On June 14, 1975 Franco appointed him as General Commander and Governmental Delegate in Ceuta, posts that he shared with his previous commitment as head of the military delegation responsible for negotiating the January 1976 Spanish-American legislative treaty.

After being promoted to major general in 1973, a second lecture at the same Center, dated March 15, 1974, drew much broader attention than the first, due to his open vindication of urgent and radical reforms on the Armed Forces structure and organization. These words attracted the attention of many future leaders of the transition towards democracy —Prince Juan Carlos de Bourbon among them.

When Díez-Alegría was appointed Commander in Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, he took Gutiérrez Mellado with him. General Gutiérrez Mellado's December 14, 1971 lecture at CESEDEN was the object of very favorable commentaries in military circles because of his speech's direct and accurate nature —something rather unusual at that time in Spain.

In 1967 Gutiérrez Mellado was assigned to be Commander in Chief of the 13th Field Artillery Regiment, based at Getafe, just outside Madrid; and on April 13, 1970 was promoted to brigadier general. For little more than a year he served as a professor at the High Center for National Defense Studies (CESEDEN), then directed by lieutenant general Manuel Díez-Alegría.

In 1963 he returned to active duty as an instructor of the University Militia, which was aimed to train reserve officers and sergeants. Two years later, in 1965, he was promoted to colonel and assigned to the Operations Section of the Army Central Staff. Due to his fluency in English and French he was sent as an observer to several NATO maneuvers, which alerted him to the poor operational capacities of the highly overstaffed, late Francoist Spanish Armed Forces.

In 1956, close his promotion to lieutenant colonel and forced by the meager pay offered to the military at the time, he decided to quit the Army temporarily. He then went to work as a commercial manager for seven years within various companies. Around this time, approximately two thirds of the military officers based in Spain's largest cities were involved in the practice of moonlighting. However, only a few of them made the drastic decision to leave the Army, as Gutiérrez Mellado did, considering it unethical to hold two different jobs at the same time and led to the detriment of his military commitment.

Furthermore, from 1953 to 1955, due to the pacts subscribed by Franco with the US Government, he acted as liaison officer between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), responsible for building the bases and facilities for US Armed Forces on Spanish soil.

In 1945, Gutiérrez Mellado was assigned to the Information Section of the High General Staff and travelled to Belgium, France and Switzerland to acquire information about attitudes and activities of republican exiles.

In 1941, after graduating from the General Staff School, he was appointed to the Ministry of the Army intelligence services. During World War II, having been promoted to major, he became responsible for the classification and final destination of the thousands of people that crossed the Pyrenees escaping from Nazi terror.

In March 1938 he was promoted to captain. National Authorities had just organized the Information and Military Police Service (SIPM in its Spanish acronym) and he was appointed head of one of the three SIPM platoons assigned to the corps that besieged the capital. Gutiérrez Mellado provided his superiors with precious pieces of information related to republican plans, deployment and armament. He also was put in charge of the evacuation of more than a hundred pilots and engineer officers to the National Zone, specialties which were much needed by the francoist forces.

In February 1937, a jury declared him not guilty on the basis of his assertion, which was corroborated by two witnesses, that he was ill at Villaviciosa de Odón around the time of mid July and so was not able to take part in the coup d'état. However, simultaneous police inquires unveiled his active intervention in it, what induced him to take shelter at an embassy.

His first appointment was the Horse Artillery Regiment, based at the so-called Canton of Campamento, an isolated group of barracks seven kilometers west of Madrid. In 1935 he joined Falange Española de las JONS, an extreme right wing political party, and on the dawn of July 20, 1936 he took arms with his unit in rebellion against the Frente Popular Government, being very active and combatant during their rebellion.

Five months after the proclamation of the Spanish Second Republic he was promoted to second lieutenant and later finished his military education at the Academy of Artillery and Engineers of Segovia, where he graduated as first lieutenant in July 1933, having achieved top grades in his class.

His wish to become an Artillery officer was shattered by the military reforms of the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in 1927, which forced him to study at the General Military Academy of Zaragoza, directed by General Francisco Franco, to obtain his qualifications.

Manuel Gutiérrez Mellado was born on April 30, 1912 in Madrid, Madrid, Spain.