How did the "Comisiones de Depuracion" in the Spanish Government of
1939-43 operate ?  Did they have a secret police to investigate
suspects ?  Can you provide links to more information ?

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Request for Question Clarification by joseleon-ga on 05 Feb 2003 09:40 PST

Hello:
  I'm happy to answer this question because it makes me investigate a
bit more on the history of my country ;-). I will try to do my best,
but in any case, don't hesitate to request for any clarification.

You can find more results on the web searching for "Comisiones
depuradoras" instead of "Comisiones de depuración", the contents of
this answer has been translated from several pages including Spanish
and Galego ones ;-)

*How did the "Comisiones depuradoras" operate? Did they have a secret
police to investigate suspects ?

Basically, those commissions were created with the purpose to "ensure"
all teachers, the ones reposible to teach the current and new
generations, were aligned with the ideas of the franquist dictadure
and to destroy the work from the previous government, the second
republic. The teachers not aligned with the new government and
specially those that were aligned with the previous government were
deposed from their positions and executed in most cases. The
commissions operated this way:

-All teachers were ceased and requested to get a good-faith
certificate to show their alignment with the new government to return
to it's previous position
-There was no police to investigate suspects, any advice from a
cacique, priest, police or major (the relevant people on that society)
about a teacher was taken into consideration without any proof or
fact, so any excuse was valid (economic interests, personal interests,
etc)
-That advice initiated an expedient against that teacher, without
judgement, and leaded to execution in most cases
-Some of that expedients were open until 70s when the dictadure was
over

The links are in spanish, if you want, I can translate any of them:

El franquismo depuró a 60.000 maestros
http://www.udel.edu/leipzig/texts4/elb09127.htm

A book about this matter:
Maestros Valencianos Bajo El Franquismo. La Depuracion Del Magisterio
1939-1944
http://libros.netstoreusa.com/0310/9788/9788478222544.shtml

A real story about comissions and how they worked (Galego)
http://www.ctv.es/USERS/davcor/numero2/contenido/historia/anos30.htm

I send this as a clarification instead an answer because I don't know
if it will be enough. Tell me what do you think.

Regards.

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Clarification of Question by richardbinks-ga on 06 Feb 2003 11:05 PST

Joseleon,
The information you gave us was just what we needed.  It won't be
necessary to go further.
Thank you very much for your help.
Richard Binks

Hello:
  I'm happy to answer this question because it makes me investigate a
bit more on the history of my country ;-). I will try to do my best,
but in any case, don't hesitate to request for any clarification.

You can find more results on the web searching for "Comisiones
depuradoras" instead of "Comisiones de depuración", the content of
this answer has been translated from several pages including Spanish
and Galego ones ;-)

*How did the "Comisiones depuradoras" operate? Did they have a secret
police to investigate suspects ?

Basically, those commissions were created with the purpose to "ensure"
all teachers, the ones reposible to teach the current and new
generations, were aligned with the ideas of the franquist dictadure
and to destroy the work from the previous government, the second
republic. The teachers not aligned with the new government and
specially those that were aligned with the previous government were
deposed from their positions and executed in most cases. The
commissions operated this way:

-All teachers were ceased and requested to get a good-faith
certificate to show their alignment with the new government to return
to their previous position
-There was no police to investigate suspects, any advice from a
cacique, priest, police or major (the relevant people on that society)
about a teacher was taken into consideration without any proof or
fact, so any excuse was valid (economic interests, personal interests,
etc)
-That advice initiated an expedient against that teacher, without
judgement, and leaded to execution in most cases
-Some of that expedients were open until 70s when the dictadure was
over

The links are in spanish, if you want, I can translate any of them:

El franquismo depuró a 60.000 maestros
http://www.udel.edu/leipzig/texts4/elb09127.htm

A book about this matter:
Maestros Valencianos Bajo El Franquismo. La Depuracion Del Magisterio
1939-1944
http://libros.netstoreusa.com/0310/9788/9788478222544.shtml

A real story about comissions and how they worked (Galego)
http://www.ctv.es/USERS/davcor/numero2/contenido/historia/anos30.htm

Search strategy

comisiones depuradoras
://www.google.com/search?hl=es&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=comisiones+depuradoras

Regards.