Max Pearson

After 18 hours held captive, the MPs were finally freed, but left acutely aware of the fragility of their democracy. The following year Joaquin Almuño's Socialist Party won the general election. Lieutenant Colonel Tejero was jailed but was released in 1996.

Joaquim Almuña, the former politician and former vice president of the European Commission, was speaking to Claire Bowes in 2021. Incidentally, Antonio Tejero Molina, the coup leader, died this month at the age of 93. And with that personal insight into the failed coup attempt in 1980s Spain, we've come to the end of this edition of the History Hour. The website is the place to visit for hundreds more first-hand stories from the past. Go to bbc.com slash witnesshistory.

And we'll be back with more for you next week, so do join us for that. This is Max Pearson from all of us here. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

Sporting Witness takes you to the events that have shaped the sports world through the eyes of the people who were there. We weren't going to ask permission, we were just going to do it. It was such an amazing feeling, it was incredible. He started to write a story about how we came up with the idea for the red and yellow cars. I got to go. We cried a bit, we laughed a bit. It was wonderful. There's a magic during those moments that carries your soul. We were truly blessed to be a part of history. Sporting Witness. Subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Täällä. Täällä. Täällä.

Kuulemme ihmisiä, jotka olivat siellä. Hän kuunteli minua, kun hän tappoi, ja hän pysähtyi. Hän sanoi, että en mennä. Mä jätän sinut tänne, jotta kerron tarinan. Tiedä, että sinulla on myyjä ja että sinulla on myyjä, se ei ole mitään parempaa kuin se. Tarkastelija-historia tuottaa sinulle ensimmäisiä asioita. Merkel saapuu ja sanoo, että minä menen, ja Tusk sanoo, että minä lopetan tuon, eikä kukaan menetä. Sinun on saapunut kompromissiin, tai sinä et menetä tämän ruumiin. Oli se kaupungit, jotka tekevät sinut rikki? No, ne eivät tekeneet minua rikki.

Hello and welcome to the History Hour from the BBC World Service with me, Max Pearson. The past brought to life by those who were there. This week the double agent thought to have been the inspiration for James Bond. Getting rid of Hitler and winning that war was so big that I don't think I ever stopped thinking that I'm doing something which is immoral. It's saving lives. Also the photograph which came to symbolise Argentina's resistance to dictatorship.

At one point the mother lifted the girl up and they shouted the slogans together. And well, that's where I took that picture. Plus the Austrian mountaineer who befriended the Dalai Lama. And the tampon task force set up in response to an American public health crisis. There were 800 cases in 1980 alone. And 40 of them resulted in deaths. And these were young women, mostly, who were dying.

That's coming up later. But we're going to begin with a dramatic story from the Second World War. During Norway's occupation by Nazi Germany, a group of Norwegian sailors set up a base on the Shetland Islands and began aiding their country's resistance. Using fishing boats, they made perilous journeys across the North Sea, smuggling agents, equipment and ammunition into Norway in a secret operation known as the Shetland Bus.

Timo Callaghan käyttää BBC Archive Recordingsia, jotta kertoo historiaa yhdestä suomalaisesta skipperistä. Leif Larsson, joka oli kaikkein suosittu,

Oh, he was determined to get away again, they said. He was always ready to go. Leif Larsson, he was a man whom instinctively other men would follow. Leif Larsson, also known as Shetland Larsson, who would go on to become one of the most decorated naval officers of the entire war. At the beginning of the war, we had the Germans walking the streets in my hometown. I didn't very much like it, so...

Life, who had volunteered to fight with the Norwegian army, made his escape to Shetland in one of those fishing boats, because he didn't want that to be the end of his war effort. I had in my mind that I should like to go back to Norway, for them back and be sailing there, if they could use me in such a job.

He also served as a route out of Norway for those at risk of arrest. But it was dangerous. Leif and his fellow sailors weren't in naval ships –

Ne olivat yksilöiden diesel-enginen kalastuspaikkoja. Viimeistelta meillä oli usein vaikeita säästöjä, ja kun menimme takaisin Norjalle, meidän täytyi mennä kohti ilmaisia ilmiöitä. Ei ollut ilmaisuutta, joten se oli aika vaikea osa toimintaa.

Olimme aina halunneet katsomaan sivuilta ja niin edelleen. Suomalaisilla oli sivuilta, joilla oli sivuilta, jotka halusivat lähettää meitä bombeja ja tukkia meitä. Mutta me menimme. Ei kaikki meitä. Minä ja muut menimme kaikki sen aikana, kun menimme sivuilta. Mutta menimme 42 henkilöä silloin.

3. Eskape through Norway on land to neutral Sweden with the help of the Norwegian resistance, still whilst avoiding German detection. Easy, right? We trained with a battleship in Scotland and it all went well. We were out in bad weather with the submarines and all went well.

The six submariners were hidden in a special compartment in the Norwegian fishing boat under sacks of peat. Then things started to go wrong.

Joulu alkoi hyvin huonosti, ja se tuli siltä, mikä oli meille ja meidän pienemmille hyvin huonosti. Joulu jäi todella paljon, ja me jäimme niitä kärjöitä.

All of a sudden the boat lurched in the opposite direction and the crew knew they had lost the torpedoes they needed to carry out the operation. We had to go over land after that because we couldn't go out with our boat again. We had to sink it and we had to go over land into Sweden.

Meillä oli joitain vaikeuksia. Olimme tuttaneet jotkut saksalaiset. Meillä oli hieman käynti siellä. Laitettiin hänet siellä myös. Ja menimme takaisin Englannille.