It is not only one of the tourist epicenters of Madrid, nor the place from which the bells ring 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 seat of the government of the Community of Madrid – was a center of police detention and torture 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, nothing recalls his past.
The history of the DGS – which centralized the police apparatus of the Franco regime – and the building which housed it was 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 “Spanish Belsen”, in reference to the Nazi concentration camp. Police officers who used torture as a means of pressure during interrogations operated in this dark space, making it “the epicenter of Francoist terror,” says Alcántara, also author of Franco’s secret. The Social and Political Brigade during the dictatorship.
There were several detention centers spread out during the Franco regime in Spain. Why was the one in Madrid the best known?
The Francoist state was centralist and all the centers of political, economic and social power were in the capital. And also the repressive power. At the Royal Post Office, there was the General Directorate of Security, which directed the police services throughout the country and already in the 1960s all those who were arrested in other cities but who were going to be tried by the Court of Public Order passed through there. . Many anti-Franco activists were tortured in their dungeons, from Marcos Ana to Julián Grimau and Enrique Ruano. At the DGS, there were police officers who stood out for the cruelty of their torture as their main means of pressure.
Everyone knows Puerta del Sol as the tourist epicenter of the capital or the place from which the bells ring every New Year’s Eve, but why is its repressive side so little known?
Because there was no point in pointing out that there was a police torture center there. Plaques have been installed there which commemorate May 2, 1808, the victims of the 11 million or those killed by Covid, but despite the fact that the victims and associations have been asking for it for a long time, none remember what was there. happened during the Franco regime.
It sometimes seems that Francoism came out of nowhere, but repression has a history, from the Restoration to the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.
We must now wait to see what will happen 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, particularly the Popular Party. by erasing this past.
Why so much resistance?
We know where the PP comes from… The Popular Alliance was founded by Francoist ministers. There is a part of the right and, of course, the extreme right which continues to claim this Franco past. We saw how Esperanza Aguirre nominated Franco for the DANA of Valencia almost as if he were a hero or Isabel Díaz-Ayuso proposed declaring the Valley of the Fallen as an Asset of Cultural Interest. There is no point in identifying what the dictatorship actually was.
How much do you think this has to do with the building that currently houses the headquarters of the Government of the Community of Madrid?
That has a lot to do with it. Remembering that there was police torture in their headquarters should not please the current leaders of the PP. It is true that, with the exception of 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 other purposes, for example hotels. So it’s not worth emphasizing that. But in Madrid this is influenced by the centrality of the building on all levels and by the fact that it is in a place visited by thousands of people from here and abroad. Placing a plaque that remembers what happened, which was Franco’s palace of terror, is uncomfortable for these political sectors.
The book goes back well before the Franco regime to explain the importance of the Puerta del Sol and in particular the Royal Post Office… What role did it play during the Second Republic?
The building dates from the 18th century and in 1848 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 the terror in other historical periods, because 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. .
The Franco regime is trying to strip the space of all the sense of protest that it has had historically. What is planned and achieved is that no one moves there
Puerta del Sol is also a place of historical claim. Under the Second Republic, it was like this and, in fact, the photos of the proclamation are legendary, but there was a dichotomy: on the one hand, there was an attempt to reform the police, but by not purifying not the apparatus, there was repression.
And what are the origins of the General Directorate of Security?
Police repression is not the prerogative of the Franco regime, even if it finds its highest point there. But when the State as we know it today is created, the different governments try to structure police forces of a centralized and modernized nature, capable of confronting these new progressive republican movements which are emerging. The DGS is the 1912 attempt to create this type of device.
It was in 1939 that the DGS began to occupy the Post Office. Why did Franco choose this place?
Basically for two reasons: the first is strategic. Puerta del Sol is the center of Madrid, where all communications pass. It is a useful place to exercise 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 this vindictive meaning that it had historically. What is planned and achieved is that no one travels there. In fact, the dictatorship itself realizes its memory and its claim a few meters away, in the Plaza de Oriente.
In the book, there is a section in which he talks about “Nazi influence on Franco’s police force.” In what sense?
This had a pretty significant influence. The first directors general of security were Nazi sympathizers and there were close relations between the Gestapo and the Spanish political and police authorities. In fact, the German political police went to Spain to train the new police officers of the Social and Political Brigade in torture techniques.
In the so-called “second Franco regime” (1960s-1970s) the repression was directed against movements that were then in full swing, such as the workers or student movements. Also against artists, intellectuals or the so-called quinquis What did this phenomenon consist of?
The DGS also tried to control the moral and social aspects. For example, under Franco, carnival was banned and it was the DGS which was in charge of it. The reality of quinquis It is about emigration from the countryside because of industrialization, but when these people arrive in the cities, they discover that they do not have quality housing, decent work or basic public services, therefore there are those who must dedicate themselves to common crime.
The case its doors are closed on is that of “Nani,” a common criminal in cahoots with the police who was arrested for a theft he denied. They brutally tortured him and he died. Yet 40 years later, the whereabouts of his body are unknown.
Many went through the DGS and were harshly persecuted and stigmatized by propaganda. Instead of solving the problems of the people, the Franco regime criminalized the poverty that it itself generated.
One of the points this affects is the lack of purification of the police forces during the Transition…
Yes, the majority of members of the Social and Political Brigade, Franco’s secret police, went overnight from the status of servants of the dictatorship to that of servants of democracy. They were part of the political and police structures because there was no kind of trial or internal purge. It is true that there have been attempts to eliminate or retire early some of the best-known agents or those who used the most extreme and brutal techniques, but despite the story we have been told sold until recently, violence continued during the Transition. , a time when people died in demonstrations, strikes, at police stations and at the DGS.
What was the purpose of the General Directorate of Security?
In 1979 it became the General Directorate of Police and belonged to the Royal Post Office until 1983. The case with which its doors closed was 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 theft which he denied. He was transferred to the DGS where he was brutally tortured and died. Yet 40 years later, the whereabouts of his body are unknown. The presence of the DGS at Puerta del Sol ended quite darkly.
