2 . The police station of Via Laietana in Barcelona , 2021 . R . Conesa ( EUROM )
1 . Book La secreta de Franco . La Brigada Político-Social durante la dictadura
Communist Party ), cultural sectors , professional associations and the actions executed against the armed struggle and terrorism in the final stages of the dictatorship and the transition .
One of the strong points of the research is undoubtedly Alcántara ’ s work on the personal files of BPS members kept in the Ministry of the Interior ’ s Archives or the Social Investigation Bulletins kept in Spain ’ s National Historical Archive . By consulting them , he has managed to compellingly describe the different profiles of the police force members and to reconstruct the careers of the most feared commissioners and inspectors throughout the dictatorship , namely , Roberto Conesa , Eduardo Quintela , Pedro Urraca , Pedro Polo , Antonio Juan Creix , Melitón Manzanas , Antonio González Pacheco ( alias ) “ Billy el Niño ”, etc .
The Amnesty Law passed in October 1977 spared the agents who had been reported , and the very agents who had acted as forces of public order during the dictatorship continued to work under democracy ( some of them being decorated and promoted ). In 1986 , the BPS was replaced by the General Commissariat of Information , a body which , since its creation , has had
a staff and budget considered “ classified information ”. Despite the “ querella argentina ” ( Argentinian complaint ), the attempt by the dictatorship ’ s victims to bring several of the police torturers ( Antonio González Pacheco , Jesús Muñecas , Celso Galván , etc .) before the Argentine courts , Spanish justice has protected them , reaffirming a model of impunity that not only affects justice , but also historical research . Alcántara has had to overcome the many stumbling blocks posed by Spain ’ s Official Secrets Act of 1968 and the Historical Heritage Act in order to gain access to certain documents . Today , many associations of archivists , historians and memorialist organisations are calling for greater transparency and a much more courageous reform of the Official Secrets Act than the one currently being considered by the Spanish government .
Books such as La secreta de Franco shed light on the impunity enjoyed by Spain ’ s forces of public order and help us understand why , in 2022 , in front of the police headquarters on Barcelona ’ s Via Laietana , there are still those who vandalise information panels and endeavour to conceal from the public the fact that the BPS practised torture there .
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