It is not only one of the tourist epicenters of Madrid, nor the place from which the bells are rung every New Year’s Eve, nor one of the protest spaces par excellence. Puerta del Sol has a repressive past and its main building, the Real Casa de Correos – current headquarters of the Government of the Community of Madrid – was a police detention and torture center during the Franco regime. There was the General Directorate of Security, through which thousands of anti-Franco activists passed, some of whom ended up dying. But 49 years after the dictator’s death there is nothing there that reminds us of his past.
The history of the DGS – which centralized the police apparatus of the Franco regime – and the building that housed it has been reconstructed by the historian Pablo Alcántara in The DGS. Franco’s palace of terror (Espasa), a detailed tour of this symbol of repression known as the “Spanish Belsen”, in reference to the Nazi concentration camp. Police agents who used torture as a method of pressure during interrogations acted in this gloomy space, which made it the “epicenter of Franco’s terror,” argues Alcántara, also the author of Franco’s secret. The Social Political Brigade during the dictatorship.
There were several detention centers that were distributed during the Franco regime in Spain. Why was the one in Madrid the best known?
The Franco state was centralist and all the centers of political, economic and social power were in the capital. And also the repressive power. In the Royal Post Office there was the General Directorate of Security, which directed the police services of the entire country and already in the 60s all those who were arrested in other cities but were going to be tried by the Public Order Court passed through there. . Many anti-Franco militants suffered torture in their dungeons, from Marcos Ana to Julián Grimau or Enrique Ruano. In the DGS there were police officers who stood out for the cruelty of their torture as the main method of pressure.
Everyone knows Puerta del Sol as the tourist epicenter of the capital or the place from which the bells are rung every New Year’s Eve, but why is its repressive side so unknown?
Because there has been no interest in pointing out that there was a police torture center there. Plaques have been installed there that commemorate May 2, 1808, the victims of 11M or those killed by Covid, but despite the fact that victims and associations have been asking for it for a long time, there are none that remember what happened there during the Franco regime. .
Sometimes it seems that Francoism came out of nowhere, but the repression has a history, from the Restoration to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.
Now we have to wait to see what happens to the declaration as a Place of Memory by the Government beyond a mention in the BOE, but there has been political interest on the part of the governments of the Community of Madrid, especially the Popular Party , in erasing that past.
Why so much resistance?
We know where the PP comes from… Popular Alliance was founded by Franco ministers. There is a part of the right and, of course, the extreme right that continues to claim that Francoist past. We have seen how Esperanza Aguirre named Franco for the DANA in Valencia practically as if he had been a hero or Isabel Díaz-Ayuso proposed declaring the Valley of the Fallen as an Asset of Cultural Interest. There is no interest in identifying what the dictatorship really was.
To what extent do you think it has to do with the building currently being the headquarters of the Government of the Community of Madrid?
It has quite a bit to do with it. Remembering that there was police torture there at their headquarters should not be to the liking of the current leaders of the PP. It is true that, except for a case like that of the Via Laietana police station in Barcelona, what happened there is not reported in many detention centers. Some have been demolished, are police stations or have been used for another purpose, for example, hotels. So it’s not interesting to emphasize that. But in Madrid it is influenced by the centrality of the building at all levels and that it is located in a place visited by thousands of people both from here and from abroad. Placing a plaque that remembers what happened, which was the palace of Franco’s terror, is uncomfortable for these political sectors.
The book goes back to long before Franco’s regime to explain how significant the Puerta del Sol is and the Royal Post Office building in particular… What role did it play during the Second Republic?
The building dates back to the 18th century and in 1848 it became the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior. When we look back we realize that he also carried out repressive policies, which helps to explain terror in other historical periods because sometimes it seems that Francoism came out of nowhere, but repression has a history, from the Restoration to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.
There is an attempt by the Franco regime to strip the space of all that sense of protest that it had historically. What is intended and achieved is that no one moves there
Puerta del Sol is also a place of historical claim. In the Second Republic it was like this and, in fact, the photos of the proclamation there are mythical, but there was a dichotomy: on the one hand, there was an attempt to reform the police forces, but by not purifying the apparatus, there was repression.
And what origins does the General Directorate of Security have?
Police repression is not something of Franco’s regime, although it has its culmination there. But when the State as we know it today is created, the different governments try to structure police forces with a centralized and modernized character that can confront these new progressive republican movements that are emerging. The DGS is the attempt from 1912 to create this type of device.
In 1939 is when the DGS began to occupy the Post Office. Why did Franco choose that place?
Fundamentally for two reasons: the first is strategic. Puerta del Sol is the center of Madrid, where all communications pass. It is a place that is useful for carrying out centralized control of repression throughout the country. On the other hand, there is a symbolic reason: there is an attempt by the Franco regime to strip the space of all that vindictive meaning that it had historically. What is intended and achieved is that no one moves there. In fact, the dictatorship itself carries out its memory and demand a few meters away, in the Plaza de Oriente.
In the book there is a section in which he talks about “the Nazi influence on Franco’s police forces.” In what sense?
It was a pretty important influence. The first general directors of security were Nazi sympathizers and there was a close relationship between the Gestapo and the Spanish political and police authorities. In fact, the German political police traveled to Spain to instruct the new police officers of the Social Political Brigade in torture techniques.
In the so-called ‘second Franco regime’ (60s and 70s) repression is directed against movements that were then on the rise, such as the labor or student movements. Also against artists, intellectuals or the so-called quinquis What did this phenomenon consist of?
The DGS also tried to control moral and social aspects. For example, under Franco the carnival was prohibited and it was the DGS that was in charge of it. The reality of quinquis It has to do with emigration from the countryside as a result of industrialization, but when these people arrive in the cities they find that they do not have quality housing, decent work or basic public services, so there are those who have to dedicate themselves to common crime.
The case with which its doors are closed is that of ‘Nani’, a common criminal in cahoots with the police who was arrested for a robbery that he denied. They savagely tortured him and he died. However, 40 years later we do not know where his body is.
Many went through the DGS and were harshly persecuted as well as stigmatized by propaganda. Instead of solving people’s problems, Franco’s regime criminalized the poverty that the regime itself generated.
One of the points that it affects is the lack of purification of the police forces during the Transition…
Yes, the majority of members of the Social Political Brigade, Franco’s secret police, went overnight from being servants of the dictatorship to being servants of democracy. They were part of the political and police structures because there was no type of trial or internal purge. It is true that an attempt was made to remove or retire early some of the best-known agents or those who used the most extreme and brutal techniques, but despite the story that has been sold to us until recently, violence continued during the Transition. , a time when people died in demonstrations, strikes, police stations and in the DGS.
What was the purpose of the General Directorate of Security?
In 1979 it became the General Directorate of Police and was in the Royal Post Office until 1983. The case with which its doors closed is that of ‘Nani’, a common criminal who was in cahoots with the police to rob jewelry stores and that he was arrested accused of having participated in a robbery that he denied. He was transferred to the DGS and there he was savagely tortured and died. However, 40 years later we do not know where his body is. The presence of the DGS in Puerta del Sol ended in a rather dark way.
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