Spanish author and journalist Javier Cercas discusses his latest book The Anatomy of a Moment a study of the attempted anti-democratic coup in Spain, in 1981. Cercas's meditation on political motives and processes and on what Hans Magnus Enzensberger called 'the heroism of retreat' not only diagnoses what is arguably the most important episode in the history of Spanish democracy but has implications for current events in other countries, as well as for our understanding of the construction of history.