Surveillance Punitivism: Colonialism, Racism, and State Terrorism in Spain

Abstract

The origins of policing in Spain are bound with its long history of colonial domination, racial exploitation, and an endless war against those labelled as "enemies of the state." This was made explicit in what Eurocentric academics have considered Spanish's modern police foundational document, the Real Cédula 1824-1-13 (Fernando VII 1824). Policing was conceived as a repressive state apparatus, aimed at safeguarding Christian social virtues and repressing intellectual and political dissidence. However, considering this document the earliest example of Spanish policing would make us complicit with the long history of denial and deliberated silence regarding notorious legalised state-crimes. The Real Cédula is directly connected with colonial legislation weaponised by the Spanish elite against a wide range of racialised and dominated populations (Gaitán and Malagón 2008).The term policing was widely used in the sixteenth century Spanish Empire, referring to the management, displacement, and exploitation of those labelled as enemies: Africans, American Indigenous populations, Muslims, Jews, protestants, and political dissidents. For instance, in the Ordenanzas de descubrimiento, nueva población y pacificación de las Indias (1573), the Spanish King Felipe II called for policing the "Indians," meaning displacing them from their towns and villages and concentrating them in colonial cities under Spanish rule (Morales Padrón 1979). It was a mass and forced mobilisation of millions of human beings for the purpose of exploiting them in crop fields and mines (Suárez 2015). Terms such as "police" or "policing" were also a key aspect of the Spanish black codes, with entire sections devoted to them. It is worth noting that these codes were not only pieces of legislation aimed at governing the enslaved workforce but also political documents encompassing every economic, cultural, religious, and political aspect of the colonies.The Spanish black codes were designed as quasi-constitutional legal instruments, designed to structure and institutionalise a system of white supremacy in service of the plantation economy (Jaúregui 2009). The black codes defined the political, social, and religious rights, not only of the oppressed but also of the oppressors. Policing held a central role in the black codes; it was, in fact, the political lifeblood of the Spanish plantation regime. For instance, the third section of the 1784 black code of Santo Domingo was explicitly titled "The Police" (Salmoral 1995). There, slavery was justified under the premise of being a humanistic mission, a necessary evil that would bring civilisation to savages. Policing there equated with regulating every aspect of the slave's individual and collective life, from alimentation to marriages to culture, and everything related to punishments and repression-that is, a fully developed police biopolitical