Directorate-General of the Police
Spanish Ministry of the Interior component to command civil police forces
The Directorate-General of the Police (DGP) is a component of the Spanish Department of the Interior responsible for exercising the direct command of the National Police Corps, the main civil law enforcement agency of Spain. The DGP, integrated in the Secretariat of State for Security, is in charge of organize, direct, coordinate and execute the missions entrusted to the National Police by the provisions in force, in accordance with the guidelines and orders issued by the Minister of the Interior.
The DGP was created in 1979 to replace the Directorate-General for Security in the command of the two civil police forces that existed at that time, the Corps of National Police and the Superior Police Corps. In 1986 both Corps were unified in the National Police Corps. Also, between 2006 and 2011 this directorate was unified with that of the Civil Guard.
The Directorate-General of the Police is headed by the Director-General, an official appointed by the Monarch at the request of the Interior Minister. To assist the Director-General there is a Deputy Director of Operations (DAO), a National Police Commissioner. The current director-general of the Police is the former SEDEF Francisco Pardo and the DAO is Chief Commissioner José Luis Santafé Arnedo.
History
1978 Police Act
Three weeks before the publication of the Constitution, the Police Act of December 4, 1978 was published. This law was a new stage for public safety in Spain.
“Directorate-General of the Police” enters the record as spanish Ministry of the Interior component to command civil police forces. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Directorate-General, Police and Spanish can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q38227904. The first chronological checks are 1979, 1986, 2006 and 2011.
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This entry incorporates text from “Directorate-General of the Police” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.