Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo and the 1982 electoral campaign: the loneliness of a president

Abstract

In 1982 President Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo called an election in which he no longer stood as presidential candidate for UCD. This article discusses the role played by the outgoing president in that election campaign. Through the press, memoirs, and mainly from the private archive of Calvo Sotelo, his activity during those days is revised, as well as the fundamental lines of his political discourse. The concern of the last president of the UCD Government, away from the frontline, was above all to vindicate the main achievements of his term in office, perhaps thinking more about his place in history than on the electoral outcome itself, that all polls predicted as disastrous.