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  The Guardia Civil, commonly known as the Benemérita, is the Spanish gendarmerie. It has foreign peace-keeping missions and maintains military status and is the equivalent of a federal paramilitary police. As a police force, the Guardia Civil is comparable today to the French Gendarmerie, the Italian Carabinieri and the Dutch Royal Marechaussee as it is part of the European Gendarmerie. The Guardia Civil uses as its leading emblem the motto "El honor es mi divisa" (Honour is my emblem) stressing its esprit de corps and pointing out the importance of honour. Their precincts are called "casa cuartel" (barrack-house) and, like other military garrisons in Spain, they appear under the motto "Todo por la patria" (Everything for the Fatherland).
[edit] HistoryThe Guardia Civil was founded in 1844 during the reign of Queen Isabel II of Spain by the Basque Navarrese aristocrat Francisco Javier Girón y Ezpeleta, second Duke of Ahumada, an 11th generation descendant of Aztec Emperor Moctezuma II[1]. The purpose of their creation was to dismantle any revolutionary sentiment in the rural population, and much focus was given to the Basque provinces. The policing done by the Guardia Civil was carried out earlier by the Holy Hermandad. The first academy of "guardias civiles" was established in the town of Valdemoro, south of Madrid, in 1855. The Guardia Civil's first job was to restore and maintain land ownership and servitude among the peasantry of Spain. In the countryside the monarchy's primary goal was to stop the spread of anti-monarchy sentiment. The end of the First Carlist War had left the Spanish landscape scarred by the destruction of civil war, and the government moved fast to suppress the increasingly-angry peasantry. Based on the model of light infantry used by Napoleon in his European campaigns, the Guardia Civil was born as a police force with high mobility that could be deployed irrespective of inhospitable conditions and that was able to patrol large areas of the countryside. Its members, called 'guardias', maintain to this date a basic patrol unit formed by two agents, usually called a "pareja" (a pair), in which one of the 'guardias' will initiate the intervention while the second 'guardia' serves as a backup to the first one. [edit] The Modern Force  Today the Guardia Civil is a police force subject to the checks and supervision expected in a democratic society.[citation needed] Moreover, the guardias' proven effectiveness throughout history, whether in controlling banditry or in addressing the subsequent challenges and tasks given them, meant that additional tasks have been added regularly to their job description.[citation needed] Today, they are primarily responsible for policing and/or safety regarding the following (but not limited to) areas and/or safety related issues (given in no special order):
[edit] PeacekeepersThe Guardia Civil has been involved in labours as peacekeepers in United Nations sponsored operations, including operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Angola, Congo, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Haiti, East Timor and El Salvador. They also served with the Spanish contingent in the war in Iraq, mainly in intelligence gathering, and they lost seven 'números'. In addition to el instituto armado ("the armed institution", the Guardia Civil is known as la benemérita ("the good-deserving"). They served in the Spanish colonies, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Spanish Guinea and Morocco. The Guardia Civil has a sister force in Costa Rica also called the Guardia Civil. The Costa Rican 'guardias' often train at the same academy as regular Spanish officers. [edit] CharacteristicsThey typically patrol in pairs. Their traditional hat is the tricornio, originally a tricorne. Its use now is reserved to parades or ceremonies, being now substituted by a cap, a beret or the characteristic "gorra teresiana"[2]. Members of the Guardia Civil often live in garrisons (casa-cuartel) with their families. Since the Guardia Civil must accommodate the families of its "guardias", it was the first police force in Europe that accommodated a same-sex partner in a military installation. The symbol of the Guardia Civil consists of the Royal Crown of Spain, a sword and a fasces. The different units have variations of this symbol. [edit] Ranks, specialisms and insignia
The corps has been organized into different specialties divided into operative and support specialties[3]:
[edit] Requirements
[edit] Criticisms[edit] SpyingOn 23 July 2007, Roberto Flórez García, a retired guardia civil ascribed to Centro Nacional de Inteligencia was charged with spying for a foreign power (allegedly Russia)[4]. [edit] Political InvolvementIn the nineteenth century the Spanish army got involved in politics regularly. The Guardia Civil was no exception. For this reason, the 'guardias" were seen historically as a reactionary force. On 3 January 1874, General Manuel Pavía y Rodríguez de Alburquerque stormed congress and ended the Spanish First Republic with a company of thirty guardias civiles. The first three decades of the 20th Century in Spain was a time of political turmoil. During this period the Guardia Civil served frequently in the restoration of order remaining mostly loyal to established regimes. Thus, it supported the dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923-1930), but it also supported the Spanish Second Republic (1931-1939). During the Spanish Civil War, the Guardia Civil forces split almost evenly between those who remained loyal to the Republic -53% of the members[5]- which changed their name to Guardia Nacional Republicana - "National Republic Guard")[6] and the rebel forces[7]. After the war, under the authoritarian government of General Francisco Franco (1939-1975), the Guardia Civil was reinforced with the members of the Real Cuerpo de Carabineros de Costas y Fronteras - "Royal Corps of Coast and Frontier Carabiners"[8]. The involvement of Guardia Civil figures in politics continued well to the end of the twentieth century: on 23 February 1981, Lt. Col. Antonio Tejero Molina, a member of the Guardia Civil, participated with other military forces in a failed coup d'etat. Along with 200 members of the Guardia Civil Lt. Col. Tejero took hold of the lower house of the Cortes. [edit] Police brutalityA different issue is the heavy-handedness use by the 'guardias'. For a long time the Guardias were feared because of their excesses, great power and authority in rural areas, and for what seemed to be a total lack of accountability for their actions. The fact that they covered mostly rural and isolated parts of the country allowed for this lack of accountability. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Guardia Civil conducted a campaign against Andalusian anarchists (Spain), accusing them of being members of the secret society The Black Hand. For this reason the 'guardias' had a mythical (negative) reputation in literature and in popular history. Some of the poems of Federico García Lorca, especially the world-famous Gypsy Ballads, portray the 'guardias civiles' as the natural enemies of both gypsies and marginal figures including against anarchists that were popular in rural areas of Southern Spain. Lorca's poems have contributed to the Guardia Civil's traditional reputation as a heavy-handed police force. [edit] See also[edit] References
[edit] External links
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