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The was an armed
carabiniers
A carabinier (also sometimes spelled carabineer or carbineer) is in principle a soldier armed with a carbine. A carbiniere is a carabiniere musket or rifle and were commonplace by the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. The word is ...
force of
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
under both the monarchy and the
Second Republic. The formal mission of this paramilitary gendarmerie was to patrol the coasts and borders of the country, operating against
fraud and
smuggling. As such the performed the dual roles of
frontier guards and
customs officials.
The force was established in 1829 and lasted until 1940 when it was summarily disbanded and merged with the
Guardia Civil
The Civil Guard ( es, Guardia Civil, link=no; ) is the oldest law enforcement agency in Spain and is one of two national police forces. As a national gendarmerie force, it is military in nature and is responsible for civil policing under the au ...
.
[''Real decreto organizando el Cuerpo de Carabineros de Costas y Fronteras para impedir el contrabando, 31 de marzo de 1829 - Gaceta de Madrid nº39'', p. 153](_blank)
/ref>[Real decreto sobre la organización de Carabineros de Costas. Instituto, organización, personal e inspección general del Cuerpo de Carabineros de Costas y Fronteras. 2 de abril de 1829 - Gaceta de Madrid nº40'', p. 157](_blank)
/ref>
Motto and uniforms
The motto of the was: (Morality, Loyalty, Courage, and Discipline). They were stationed along all the Spanish land borders, in the maritime provinces and in Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...
.
Their uniform was dark blue with red facings
A facing colour is a common tailoring technique for European military uniforms where the visible inside lining of a standard military jacket, coat or tunic is of a different colour to that of the garment itself.René Chartrand, William Younghusb ...
until the 1920s and thereafter greyish green.
Commanders
Among the notable commanders of the corps included José Olaguer Feliú (1923–1927), José María Galán
José María Galán Rodríguez (1904–1978) was a Spanish military officer. He served in the Spanish Civil War. He was the brother of Fermín Galán, leader of the Jaca Uprising, and Francisco Galán. Before the war, he was a lieutenant of the ...
and Gonzalo Queipo de Llano
Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Sierra (5 February 1875 – 9 March 1951) was a Spanish military leader who rose to prominence during the July 1936 coup and then the Spanish Civil War and the White Terror.
Biography
A career army man, Queipo de Lla ...
(1934–1936).
History
First hundred years
The Corps was established as the 'Royal Carabinier Corps of the Coasts and Borders' () by a royal decree issued by King Fernando VII on 9 March 1829. It was led by Field Marshal José Ramón Rodil at the time that Luis López Ballesteros
Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...
was Minister of Finance.[Real decreto de organización del Cuerpo de Carabineros del Reino, 9 de diciembre 1842 - Gaceta de Madrid nº2985](_blank)
/ref> Shortly thereafter, in 1833, the corps was renamed as 'Carabiniers of the Royal Finance' (). Placed under the Finance Ministry they went through a period of gradual neglect and by 1842 the were almost dysfunctional as a corps. Field Marshal Martín José de Iriarte was then entrusted with their reorganization. Thus the corps was reformed and re-organised as the 'Carabinier Corps of the Kingdom' () in order to replace the former ineffective and discredited body.
At the time of the Restoration the and the , the other paramilitary Spanish corps, were placed under the War Ministry, "for a better organization and discipline", being given a military character by means of a law that developed and modified certain aspects of the 1878 Constitutive Army Law (). The latter set the functions of the Armed Forces following the Spanish Constitution of 1876
The Spanish Constitution of 1876 ( es, Constitución Española), was the constitution enacted after the restoration of the Spanish monarchy. The constitution was a conservative text, It came into effect on 30 June 1876.
It remained in force u ...
.[Ramón Gómez Martínez, ''El Estatuto Jurídico-Constitucional del militar de carrera en España. Antecedentes, fundamento y situación actual.'' Tesis doctoral. 2008 Universidad de Granada. Facultad de Derecho, P. 111-114](_blank)
/ref>
In August 1923 Lieutenant General José Olaguer Feliú was named General Director of the . Despite this being a time of economic hardship, he was able to improve conditions of service within the corps; reducing the daily working hours to twelve. He also achieved the expansion and improvement of the Carabinier Corps' Schools (), where recruits were trained. General Olaguer Feliu was responsible for the construction of new quarters and repairing the existing ones; for the founding of schools for the sons and daughters of the in certain locations. Finally José Olaguer Feliú provided better schooling and conditions for orphans of at the San Lorenzo de El Escorial
San Lorenzo de El Escorial, also known as El Escorial de Arriba, is a town and municipality in the Community of Madrid, Spain, located to the northwest of the region in the southeastern side of the Sierra de Guadarrama, at the foot of Moun ...
Carabinier' Orphans School ().
In 1929, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the corps, a monument was built in recognition of the , at San Lorenzo del Escorial. In addition the Great Cross of the Civil Order of Beneficence () was awarded collectively to the members of the corps by King Alfonso XIII
Alfonso XIII (17 May 1886 – 28 February 1941), also known as El Africano or the African, was King of Spain from 17 May 1886 to 14 April 1931, when the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed. He was a monarch from birth as his father, Alf ...
for deeds and services rendered by the in fighting fires, floods and the rescuing of shipwrecked persons.[Real decreto concediendo al Cuerpo de Carabineros la Gran Cruz de la Orden civil de Beneficencia, con distantivo negro y blanco, p. 1674, 10 de septiembre 1929 - Gaceta de Madrid nº253](_blank)
/ref>
Philippines
The was established by the Captaincy General of the Philippines
The Captaincy General of the Philippines ( es, Capitanía General de Filipinas ; tl, Kapitaniya Heneral ng Pilipinas) was an administrative district of the Spanish Empire in Southeast Asia governed by a governor-general as a dependency of the ...
in 1842 to serve as the police force in the Spanish East Indies
The Spanish East Indies ( es , Indias orientales españolas ; fil, Silangang Indiyas ng Espanya) were the overseas territories of the Spanish Empire in Asia and Oceania from 1565 to 1898, governed for the Spanish Crown from Mexico City and Madri ...
. Its role was eventually assumed by the .
Spanish Civil War
The Corps was one of the units of law enforcement where the 1936 Spanish coup of July 1936, which led to the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, link ...
, found the least support. With the regular army divided and the almost 50-50% split of the Civil Guard, the Republican government was heavily dependent on trained and properly equipped loyalist units such as the Carabineros and the Assault Guards to fight in the first crucial battles of the war. In mid-1936 there had been a total of about 16,096 men in the corps: 3 generals, 770 officers, 1,169 sub-officers and 14,154 . Approximately a third were in the territories that fell to the rebel side (about 5–6,000 men) after the coup and the two-thirds that were in the areas controlled by the Republic (about 10,000) remained loyal to the established government.
As a professional force of generally proven loyalty to the Republic, the carabineros formed an elite unit, which was integrated into the mixed brigades
Mixed brigade ( es, brigada mixta) was a basic tactical military unit of the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War. It was initially designed as “pocket division”, an innovative maneuverable combined-arms formation. Because of high sa ...
of the Republican Army. The Carabinier corps was increased in strength to 40,000 men. The initiative for this restructuring was taken by the then Finance Minister Juan Negrín
Juan Negrín López (; 3 February 1892 – 12 November 1956) was a Spanish politician and physician. He was a leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party ( es, Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PSOE) and served as finance minister and ...
.
Numbers of loyalist carabineros taken prisoner by the Army of Africa in August 1936 were executed in Badajoz
Badajoz (; formerly written ''Badajos'' in English) is the capital of the Province of Badajoz in the autonomous community of Extremadura, Spain. It is situated close to the Portuguese border, on the left bank of the river Guadiana. The populatio ...
.
Mixed brigades
Certain units of the People's Republican Army were entirely made up of , such as the 65th, 85th, 87th, 152nd, 179th, 211th, 222nd and 228th mixed brigades
Mixed brigade ( es, brigada mixta) was a basic tactical military unit of the Republican army during the Spanish Civil War. It was initially designed as “pocket division”, an innovative maneuverable combined-arms formation. Because of high sa ...
. The 3rd —the ''Tercera Brigada Mixta'' mentioned in the ''Si me quieres escribir
"Si me quieres escribir" (English: "If You Want to Write to Me"), also known as "Ya sabes mi paradero" ("You Know Where I Am Posted") and "El frente de Gandesa" (The Gandesa Front), is one of the most famous songs of the Spanish Republican Armed ...
'' song— and 5th
Fifth is the ordinal form of the number five.
Fifth or The Fifth may refer to:
* Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as in the expression "pleading the Fifth"
* Fifth column, a political term
* Fifth disease, a contagious rash tha ...
were among the most distinguished mixed brigades of the loyalist army and saw action in most of the main battles of the civil war, including the Jarama
Jarama () is a river in central Spain. It flows north to south, and passes east of Madrid where the El Atazar Dam is built on a tributary, the Lozoya River. It flows into the river Tagus in Aranjuez. The Manzanares is a tributary of the Jaram ...
, Brunete and the Teruel
Teruel () is a city in Aragon, located in eastern Spain, and is also the capital of Teruel Province. It has a population of 35,675 in 2014 making it the least populated provincial capital in the country. It is noted for its harsh climate, with ...
battles.
End of the war and disbandment
Following the Francoist victory in 1939 the Corps was disbanded. This measure was taken by the new regime as a reprisal for the majority of the carabinier units having remained loyal to the Republic during the rising of 1936. A law was passed on 15 March 1940 by which the Spanish Dictatorship terminated the , transferring its remaining personnel and assets to the Guardia Civil
The Civil Guard ( es, Guardia Civil, link=no; ) is the oldest law enforcement agency in Spain and is one of two national police forces. As a national gendarmerie force, it is military in nature and is responsible for civil policing under the au ...
. Article number 4 of the aforementioned law stated:
Nine years after the end of Franco's dictatorship the Spanish Law 37/1984 of 22 October 1984 recognized the rights and services of those who had been part of the Armed Forces, Police and Carabiniers of the Spanish Republic (). This law gave back to the surviving members of the corps some of the rights and recognition of which they had been deprived in 1940.Ley 37/1984, de 22 de octubre, de reconocimiento de derechos y servicios prestados a quienes durante la guerra civil formaron parte de las Fuerzas Armadas, Fuerzas de Orden Público y Cuerpo de Carabineros de la República. ''"B.O.E. (Boletín Oficial del Estado del Gobierno de España)"''. Núm. 262. 1 de noviembre de 1984, pp. 31689 a 31690
/ref>
References
External links
*
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