Gutiérrez Mellado escaped by walking to the nearby village of Villaviciosa de Odón, frequented by his family during their summer holidays, and later returned to Madrid in early August.
[8] 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.
A few weeks later he joined Franco's clandestine intelligence services operating in Madrid, provided with an ID card belonging to a deceased republican soldier named Teodosio Paredes Laina.
[13] 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.
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.
[20] 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.
[21] After being promoted to major general in 1973,[22] 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.
Not in vain it was the first time, during those hazardous days of transition, with public opinion wondering and deeply worried about the Armed Forces’ future attitude and behavior, Spaniards heard of a high ranking Army officer openly aligned with the Rule of Law and demanding absolute respect from his subordinates towards civil power: “We must never forget that the Army, no matter how sacred its mission may be, is not there to rule but to serve under the command of the national government, and that its exclusive purpose is to serve Spain and our King”.
[27] In July 1976, Gutiérrez Mellado was appointed Commander in Chief of the Army General Staff following favorable remarks about his virtues made by King Juan Carlos to Adolfo Suárez, the recently nominated Prime Minister.
[28] Only three months later, on September 23, Gutiérrez Mellado was appointed vice president for Defense Affairs, a recently created office aimed at promoting the modernization of the Armed Forces.
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.
[30] His detailed reform project comprised a series of actions to be urgently taken on the following areas: defense superstructure; Armed Forces financial program; integrated personnel policy, and the limitation of the competence of military jurisdiction.
[34] Gutiérrez Mellado's most popular image is that at the Spanish Congress of the Deputies during the failed coup d'état on February 23rd 1981 he physically confronted the armed Guardia Civil troops led by Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero.
Apart from trying to alleviate the effects of drugs and repress its trafficking and consumption, its founder wanted society to give teenagers strong moral backup to repel them and to be brave enough to answer “No thank you” if tempted, as could be read on their posters during their first publicity campaign.
[40] 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.