Emilio Alonso Manglano (April 13, 1926, Valencia, Spain – July 8, 2013, Madrid, Spain) was a Spanish military officer, who reached the rank of lieutenant general and was director of the Superior Center of Defense Information (CESID) between 1981 and 1995.
Biography
He entered the General Military Academy on 24 July 1944, being promoted in the following years. He graduated as number one of the 57th Army General Staff promotion. He participated in the Ifni War and was chief of staff of the Paratroopers Brigade. On 22 May 1981, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, he was appointed director of the CESID, by the Minister of Defense Alberto Oliart, after the failed coup d'état of 23-f.
He resigned from his post on June 15, 1995 as a result of the media scandal over illegal wiretapping by CESID, and was tried, initially convicted and finally acquitted of the crime of illegal interception of telephone conversations at the headquarters of Herri Batasuna, reported in 1998.
He passed away on July 8, 2013, at the age of eighty-seven in Madrid as a result of cancer.
On October 3, 2021, the newspaper ABC published the "Manglano Papers", a series of documents analyzed and researched by journalists Juan Fernández-Miranda and Javier Chicote, a seven-container archive containing hundreds of documents and agendas with information on Emilio Alonso Manglano and his period as director of Cesid between 1981 and 1995. The entire archive was revealed in the biography of Lieutenant General Manglano, entitled "El jefe de los espías" (Roca, 2021).