Carabineros

Motto and uniforms

The motto of the Carabineros was: Moralidad, lealtad, valor y disciplina. They were stationed along all the Spanish land borders, in the maritime provinces and in Madrid. Their uniform was dark blue with red facings until the 1920s and thereafter greyish green.

Commanders

Among the notable commanders of the corps included José Olaguer Feliú (1923-1927), José María Galán and Gonzalo Queipo de Llano (1934-1936).

First hundred years

The Carabineros Corps was established as the 'Royal Carabinier Corps of the Coasts and Borders' (Real Cuerpo de Carabineros de Costas y Fronteras) 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 was Minister of Finance. Shortly thereafter, in 1833, the corps was renamed as 'Carabiniers of the Royal Finance' (Carabineros de la Real Hacienda). Being placed under the Finance Ministry they went through a period of gradual neglect and by 1842 the Carabineros were almost dysfunctional as a corps and Field Marshal Martín José de Iriarte was entrusted with their reorganization. Thus the corps was revamped and re-established as the 'Carabinier Corps of the Kingdom' (Cuerpo de Carabineros del Reino) in order to replace the former ineffective and discredited body.

At the time of the Restoration the Carabineros and the Guardia Civil, 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 (Ley Constitutiva del Ejército). The latter set the functions of the Armed Forces following the Spanish Constitution of 1876.

In August 1923 Lieutenant General José Olaguer Feliú was named General Director of the Carabineros. Despite the times of economic hardship, he set to improve the sorry condition of the corps, reducing the daily working hours to twelve. He also achieved the expansion and improvement of the Carabinier Corps' Schools ( Colegios del Cuerpo de Carabineros) where the members were trained. He cared as well about building new quarters and repairing the existing ones, founding also schools for the sons and daughters of the Carabineros in certain locations. Finally José Olaguer Feliú also provided better schooling and conditions for orphans of Carabineros at the San Lorenzo de El Escorial Carabinier' Orphans School (Colegio de Huérfanos de Carabineros de San Lorenzo del Escorial).

In 1929, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the corps, a monument was built in recognition of the Carabineros, at San Lorenzo del Escorial. In addition the Great Cross of the Civil Order of Beneficence (Gran Cruz de la Orden Civil de Beneficencia) was awarded collectively to the members of the corps by King Alfonso XIII for deeds and services rendered by the Carabineros in fighting fires, floods and the rescuing of shipwrecked persons.

Spanish Civil War

At the beginning of the Civil War the rebellion of the Generals found little favour among the Carabineros. With the regular army divided and the majority of the Civil Guard joining the rebellion, 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 about 16,096 men in the corps: 3 generals, 770 chiefs and officers, 1,169 sub-officers and 14,154 Carabineros. Approximately a third were on the territories that fell to the rebel side (between 5,000 and 6,000 men) after the coup and the two-thirds that were on the areas controlled by the Republic (about 10,000) remained loyal to the established government.

The Carabineros Corps was one of the units of law enforcement where the 1936 coup of the pro-Fascist generals found the least support. After Spain became divided, more than two-thirds of the members of the corps remained loyal to the government of the Republic standing against the Francoist rebels.

As a professional force of generally proven loyalty to the Republic, the carabineros formed an elite unit, which was integrated into the mixed brigades of the Republican Army. The Carabinier corps was increased in strength to 40,000 men. The initiative was taken by the then Finance Minister Juan Negrín.

Mixed brigades

Certain units of the People's Republican Army were entirely made up of Carabineros, such as the 65th, 85th, 87th, 152nd, 179th, 211th, 222nd and 228th mixed brigades. The 3rd —the Tercera Brigada Mixta mentioned in the Si me quieres escribir song— and 5th 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, Brunete and the Teruel battles.

End of the war and disbandment

Following the Francoist victory in 1939 the Carabineros Corps was disbanded. This measure was motivated by the resentment of the victorious faction that the majority of the carabinier units not having rebelled against the Republic during the rising of 1936. Since one of General Franco's —and also late General Sanjurjo's— main aims had been to annihilate the Spanish Republic and its supporters, a law was passed on 15 March 1940 by which the Spanish Dictatorship terminated the Cuerpo de Carabineros, transferring its remaining personnel and assets to the Guardia Civil. Article number 4 of the aforementioned law stated:

The present Inspección General de Carabineros is herewith removed. Its activities and functions will be taken over by a single section of the Dirección General de la Guardia Civil and all powers will be transferred to its General Director. The personnel of this corps will be assigned to the various services that will be defined by this law as exclusive to the Guardia Civil corps in the way that will be determined by its General Director according to the abilities and conditions of its personnel.

Nine years after the end of Franco's dictatorship the Spanish Law 37/1984 of 22 October recognized the rights and services of those who had been part of the Armed Forces, Police and Carabiniers of the Spanish Republic (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). 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.