The visitor to Spain is frequently struck with the number of persons whom he meets on all sides clad in various uniforms and armed, some with cutlasses alone, others with revolvers in addition. If he asks who they are, he is told that they are the police, and then he is perplexed to find such a large number of distinct bodies, all apparently performing much the same duties. A few words of explanation as to the various police-forces of the country and their different functions may not be out of place.
In the first place, every town has its body of municipal police, under the orders of the Alcalde. Their chief duty is to regulate the traffic, to maintain order in the streets, and to report to the Town Council any infraction of the municipal by-laws, and to another body of police anything or any person whom they may regard as suspicious or a possible danger to the public security. They do not themselves, as a rule, arrest malefactors, though no doubt they are empowered to do so on emergency.
These policemen are well-intentioned, but on the whole ineffective, not from any fault of their own so much as from the conditions of their appointment and tenure of place. In Spain anything can be done by influence, and it is practically impossible to enforce the by-laws against a person in high place who chooses to break them. Not long ago I was at an exhibition, which a very great number of people had gone to see on that particular day. The municipal police were doing their best to make the crowd “pass along,” but at one point there was a block, caused by one or two well-dressed men who refused to move. I asked the policeman why he did not make them, and he replied that one of them was So-and-so (a person of local importance) and that if he said anything to him he would find himself dismissed the next day![20] In a certain town not long ago a body of police inspectors was established, whose duty it was to supervise the municipal police and report derelictions of duty, and as far as I could learn they were doing useful work. After about three months they all disappeared. On inquiry I was told that the reason of their suppression was that one of them had reported the carriage of some duke or marquis for obstructing the traffic, and that the indignant nobleman had insisted on and obtained the abolition of the force.
The municipal police go off duty about 8 p.m., and are replaced by the serenos or night-watchmen, who patrol the streets all night carrying a pike and a lantern, and in some towns still cry the hours. Hence their name, from their not unmusical cry, “Las doce han dado y sereno” (“twelve o’clock”—or whatever the hour is—“and a fine night.”)
Alongside of the municipal police is what is known as the Vigilancia. It is they who have to deal with criminals of all sorts within their own districts, arrest pickpockets and other offenders, investigate thefts, murders, &c., and catch the guilty. To them the hotels report the arrival and departure of guests, and it is their business to find any persons who are wanted on extradition warrants. In short, they perform most of the ordinary police duties except those assigned to the municipal police.
There is also a body of rural police, whose duty it is to patrol the country districts; they are few in number and not particularly effective. It is not often that one runs across any of them, even in their own districts.
The most important and by far the finest body of men in Spain is the Civil Guard, popularly known as the Benemerita (well-deserving). This force is one which, both in physique and morale, would do credit to any country in the world. They are under very strict discipline, and are prevented as far as possible from associating with any one outside of their own body—for instance, with the ordinary police-forces. Even the officers are under stricter regulations than those of the regular Army. I was told of one case where a junior officer, after due warning, was broke for gambling. The force is officered from the regular Army, and so highly is the service esteemed that an officer who obtains a commission in the Civil Guard ipso facto loses a step. Very great care is exercised both in their selection and in recruiting the rank and file.
They are something in the nature of a military police, and may be generally compared to the Irish Constabulary; they do not perform ordinary police duties, but in case of anything serious, such as a riot, they would act, and they are expected to hunt down and catch malefactors who are escaping from justice—which, indeed, they usually succeed in doing. They practically have power of life and death, as if, in the execution of their duty, they think it necessary to shoot, no questions are asked. They always go about in couples, a young man accompanying an older one, sometimes on foot, generally on horseback. They are the terror of evildoers, and some years ago entirely stamped out the brigandage which was then rife in the South of Spain, by the simple expedient of shooting down the brigands wherever they caught them. But I have never heard it suggested that they abuse their powers, and every one, foreigners as well as Spaniards, speaks well of them. Moreover—and this is rare in Spain—they are said, I believe with truth, to be incorruptible, and everybody has the utmost confidence in them.
I have already referred to this force being called on to protect the nervous nuns and the ostensibly non-militant clergy during the anticlericalist demonstrations in November, 1909. It may be interesting to show how they regarded the political situation at that time, premising that as they are in daily contact with the people, no body in the kingdom has its finger more closely pressed on the public pulse.
“You seem to have had your work for nothing,” I remarked to a couple of my friends at their barracks on the evening after one of the demonstrations. “I never saw a more orderly crowd.”