Author<\/strong>: Pablo Alc\u00e1ntara Publisher<\/strong>: Planeta (Barcelona, 2022)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ricard Conesa<\/strong>, Historian and project manager at he EUROM , editor of the magazine Observing Memories<\/p>\n\n\n\n Barcelona, August 2022. The information panel in front of the police station at No. 43 on Via Laietana was vandalised again. Nothing is legible. What did it say? Who poured paint on it? And why? In the spring of 2019, Barcelona City Council decided to put up a panel a few metres away from the building telling the frightening story behind its walls. The Barcelona headquarters of Franco\u2019s political police, the Brigada Pol\u00edtico-Social (BPS, the Political-Social Brigade), its premises were used to torture and systematically violate human rights during the Franco dictatorship. Today, different associations of ex-political prisoners, former deportees or relatives of victims of Franco\u2019s regime \u2013 such as those gathered under the umbrella of the Popular Memory Athenaeum, among others \u2013 recall the facts and call for this police station, still in operation, to be turned into a centre of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s hard to understand the reason why a study on the role played by Franco\u2019s political police in Spain had not been carried out until now. While other countries have seen the publication of books, articles, reports by human rights institutions and even the release of films dedicated to the political police and secret services, Spain still lacked such a study. Historian Pablo Alc\u00e1ntara sought to fill this gap with his book La secreta de Franco. La Brigada Pol\u00edtico-Social durante la dictadura<\/em> [Franco\u2019s Secret Police. The Political-Social Brigade during the Dictatorship], a publication resulting from his PhD thesis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result of the restructuring of the Public Order Forces between 1938 (still at war) and 1942, the BPS emerged as the dictatorship\u2019s \u201ctrue praetorian guard\u201d. To this end, it had the invaluable assistance of H. Himmler\u2019s Gestapo and from 1953, in the throes of the Cold War, the CIA\u2019s cooperation through collaboration in international operations and the training of Spanish agents. Alc\u00e1ntara delves into the working methodology of the BPS and its role in major acts of repression, such as the fight against the anti-Franco guerrillas, the workers\u2019 movement, the student movement, clandestine political parties (especially Spain\u2019s Communist Party), cultural sectors, professional associations and the actions executed against the armed struggle and terrorism in the final stages of the dictatorship and the transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the strong points of the research is undoubtedly Alc\u00e1ntara\u2019s work on the personal files of BPS members kept in the Ministry of the Interior\u2019s Archives or the Social Investigation Bulletins kept in Spain\u2019s National Historical Archive. By consulting them, he has managed to compellingly describe the different profiles of the police force members and to reconstruct the careers of the most feared commissioners and inspectors throughout the dictatorship, namely, Roberto Conesa, Eduardo Quintela, Pedro Urraca, Pedro Polo, Antonio Juan Creix, Melit\u00f3n Manzanas, Antonio Gonz\u00e1lez Pacheco (alias) \u201cBilly el Ni\u00f1o<\/em>\u201d, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Amnesty Law passed in October 1977 spared the agents who had been reported, and the very agents who had acted as forces of public order during the dictatorship continued to work under democracy (some of them being decorated and promoted). In 1986, the BPS was replaced by the General Commissariat of Information, a body which, since its creation, has had a staff and budget considered \u201cclassified information\u201d. Despite the \u201cquerella argentina\u201d (Argentinian complaint), the attempt by the dictatorship\u2019s victims to bring several of the police torturers (Antonio Gonz\u00e1lez Pacheco, Jes\u00fas Mu\u00f1ecas, Celso Galv\u00e1n, etc.) before the Argentine courts, Spanish justice has protected them, reaffirming a model of impunity that not only affects justice, but also historical research. Alc\u00e1ntara has had to overcome the many stumbling blocks posed by Spain\u2019s Official Secrets Act of 1968 and the Historical Heritage Act in order to gain access to certain documents. Today, many associations of archivists, historians and memorialist organisations are calling for greater transparency and a much more courageous reform of the Official Secrets Act than the one currently being considered by the Spanish government. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Books such as La secreta de Franco<\/em> shed light on the impunity enjoyed by Spain\u2019s forces of public order and help us understand why, in 2022, in front of the police headquarters on Barcelona\u2019s Via Laietana, there are still those who vandalise information panels and endeavour to conceal from the public the fact that the BPS practised torture there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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