Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo was the Prime Minister of Spain for a short period between 1981 and 1982, and was centre stage when Spain experienced its worst and most dangerous moment in its transition from General Franco’s military dictatorship to democracy. He was about to be sworn in as Prime Minister at the end of a three-day debate after the resignation of Adolfo Suárez, Spain’s first post-Franco premier, when around 200 Civil Guards burst into the Cortes parliament chamber, firing machine guns into the ceiling and declaring that a coup was under way.

Calvo Sotelo joined the other deputies — with the exception of Suárez who remained impassive in his seat — on the floor as the 17-hour drama unfolded and Spain held its breath. The coup attempt finally collapsed when King Juan Carlos, dressed in full military regalia as head of the armed forces, went on television to denounce the plotters and appeal for peace.

Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo y Bustelo was born into a prominent political family of monarchists in Madrid in 1926. His uncle José had been Finance Minister under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera and it was his murder, at the hands of soldiers of the Second Republic and some socialist activists, which provided the final descent into civil war, prompting General Franco to commence a military rising against the Government.

Calvo Sotelo trained as an engineer, with a specialist interest in the applications of chemistry to industry. In 1971 he was elected to Franco’s Cortes as the solicitor of the chemical industry’s trade union.

Like his uncle José, Calvo Sotelo was a monarchist and not a Falangist. In 1975 he was one of the founders of an association of politicians, mostly of the Right and Centre Right, which, disguised as a publishing firm (Fedisa), sought to prepare the way for Spain’s peaceful transistion from autocracy to democracy.

Picked by Carlos Arias Navarro as Minister of Commerce in the Government formed at the King’s request after Franco‘s death in 1975, Calvo Sotelo sided with the politicians who urged the total dismantling of Franco’s instruments of government and not merely the superficial changes that Arias envisaged. Adolfo Suárez, successor in 1976 to Arias as Prime Minister, retained Calvo Sotelo in the Cabinet, and entrusted him with the cohesion of more than a dozen centre-right and centre-left political associations into one party, the Union of the Democratic Centre (UCD), to contest the elections that June for what, in effect, turned out to be the constituent assembly of Spain’s new democracy.

The UCD won both those and the subsequent March 1979 elections. On both occasions, Calvo Sotelo, standing for Madrid, received almost as many votes as Suárez. Suárez kept him in the Cabinet, firstly from 1978 to 1980 as Minister for Relations with the European Economic Community, and then as vice prime minister in charge of economic affairs. He was promoted when in January 1981 Suárez resigned the premiership for personal reasons. The UCD had been plagued with squabbles between its left and right sectors. Calvo Sotelo had identified himself with the Right, but after long debates the left sector agreed to accept him as the party’s new parliamentary leader. He was duly called upon by the King to head a new government.

Under the Constitution he had first to obtain parliamentary approval for the policies he proposed to pursue. He presented a vague programme to deal with the country’s current problems: inflation, unemployment, terrorism. He announced his intentions to seek Spain’s entry into Nato as rapidly as possible and with no other sanction than that of a simple majority in parliament: Suárez had promised a referendum. When, on February 23, after three days of debate, the voting on the programme was about to begin, the assembly was invaded and held at gunpoint by some 200 paramilitary Civil Guards in an attempt to overthrow the Government.

The event was to serve Calvo Sotelo well in the short term. On February 25, after the collapse of the military rebellion, his appointment as Prime Minister was confirmed by the vote of all the UCD members of the assembly and 21 others as well, giving him a majority of 186 votes to 158. Thereafter also the Socialist opposition seemed as anxious as he not to give the anti-democratic element in the armed services any excuse for another attempt at a coup. They readily agreed to security measures against terrorism and to a law to slow down the establishment of autonomous communities in Spain as envisaged in the Constitution.

He leaves a widow, seven sons and a daughter.

Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo, Prime Minister of Spain, 1981-82, was born on April 14, 1926. He died on May 3, 2008, aged 82