The first Francoist political police for the last republican cities: The SIPM Special Detachments (January-September 1939)

Abstract

This article analyzes the Special Detachments that the Military Police and Information Service (SIPM), the Francoist military intelligence agency, established during the first third of 1939. Its function was to manage the occupations of the last large Republican cities from the police and repressive sphere. They arose from the military practice during the process of control of these modern urban spaces, which meant an unprecedented experiment for the invading troops. In the first place, they were in charge of reorganizing the networks of the different clandestine organizations of ambush sympathizers that awaited them in inside. That is to say, to reorganize the Fifth Column, whose staff was the only one tacitly purged by having collaborated with the rebel intelligence services during the previous months, if not years. Second, they deployed the incipient police tasks from the immediate occupation to the establishment of the dictatorial administration in those places. This research is based empirically and mainly on the documentation generated by the SIPM itself, today kept in the General Military Archive of Ávila. Other files from different documentary centers are added to it. They allow us to affirm that these Special Detachments were the first Francoist political police in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia and Cartagena. Also that their presence led to numerous internal conflicts for the management and control of urban public order with many other institutions created or commissioned for this purpose. And, finally, that its existence blurs, even more if possible, the boundary between the war and the postwar period.