In Spanish towns and cities, the Policia Municipal (Municipal Police), also known as the Policia Local or Guardia Urbana, is a police force organized at the municipal level.[1]
Municipal police are authorized in every town and city of 5,000 or more people, of which the Madrid's is the largest force and the Barcelona's is the second largest.In towns and villages that are too small to organize a force, their function is performed by the Guardia Civil or Autonomous Community force, assisted by uniformed municipal employees with limited law enforcement authority called "Vigilantes Municipales", where such exists. Although their powers were, in most cases, quite limited, the local police services of individual towns and cities supplemented the work of the National Police Corps, dealing with such matters as traffic, parking, monitoring public demonstrations, guarding municipal buildings, and enforcing local ordinances. They also collaborated with the National Police Corps by providing personnel to assist in crowd control. Numbering about 37,000 individuals in 1986, the local police were generally armed only with pistols. [2]
A Renault Scénic of the Policía Municipal of
Madrid See also
References
This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the Library of Congress Country Studies.