General and Historical Archive of Defense

The General and Historical Archive of Defense was created by Royal Decree 1674/2011, of November 18 and constitutes one of the eight historical archives of the Defense declared National Archives. It has assigned the double function of historical archive and intermediate archive.

It is intended to identify, describe, preserve and disseminate the documentation generated by the Ministry of Defense, the autonomous and peripheral bodies of the Ministry and the bodies that manage the Common Corps of the Armed Forces.

Name of the resource	Extreme dates	Number of records	Observations
Virtual Defense Library. Military Justice Files		3.275	ECon the general term of "Military Justice Files" and from the First Territorial Military Court and the Third Territorial Military Court, judicial files (cases, preliminary investigations, inquiries, etc.) are kept in the Historical Defense Archive. They include the exercise of military jurisdiction over the entire population due to the application of the war camps promulgated by the main officers rebelled in 1936, and which continued to be applied after 1939, constituting one of the main control mechanisms of the dictatorship. The territorial military courts, as the sending agencies of the documentation, inherited responsibility for these files filed in military governments, commanders and captaincies, whose antecedents exceptionally date back, in some provinces, to the nineteenth century, and whose most recent cases reach until the publication of Organic Law 4/1987, of July 15, on the Competence and Organization of Military Jurisdiction. Judicial files relating to the provinces of Madrid, Cáceres, Badajoz, Segovia, Ávila, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Albacete, Toledo, Ciudad Real, Alicante, Castellón and Valencia are from the First Territorial Military Court. The Third Territorial Military Court has incorporated the files relating to the province of Navarre. In order to turn this valuable judicial documentary fund into a documentary heritage at the service of citizens, the instruments for monitoring and tracing the documents created by military judicial bodies have been adapted into tools for searching and tracing specific files. The complete lists of names and files without defendant for the location of information are available on the Defence Cultural Heritage website. On the other hand, those directly related to the war and the first years of the dictatorship continue to be digitized and published.
Judicial cases of the First Territorial Military Court	1898-1070	430,753	It constitutes the most voluminous and consulted background to this file, and is affected by what is stated in Law 20/2022 on Democratic Memory, which, in its article 5, declares illegal and illegitimate the bodies producing this documentation, as well as the nullity of their sentences or sanctions. The assessment, context and interpretation of the information contained therein must take into account what is expressed in the aforementioned law. They offer the possibility of downloading the content in XLSX or CSV files

Name of the resource

Extreme dates

Number of records

Observations

Virtual Defense Library. Military Justice Files

3.275

ECon the general term of "Military Justice Files" and from the First Territorial Military Court and the Third Territorial Military Court, judicial files (cases, preliminary investigations, inquiries, etc.) are kept in the Historical Defense Archive. They include the exercise of military jurisdiction over the entire population due to the application of the war camps promulgated by the main officers rebelled in 1936, and which continued to be applied after 1939, constituting one of the main control mechanisms of the dictatorship.

The territorial military courts, as the sending agencies of the documentation, inherited responsibility for these files filed in military governments, commanders and captaincies, whose antecedents exceptionally date back, in some provinces, to the nineteenth century, and whose most recent cases reach until the publication of Organic Law 4/1987, of July 15, on the Competence and Organization of Military Jurisdiction. Judicial files relating to the provinces of Madrid, Cáceres, Badajoz, Segovia, Ávila, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Albacete, Toledo, Ciudad Real, Alicante, Castellón and Valencia are from the First Territorial Military Court. The Third Territorial Military Court has incorporated the files relating to the province of Navarre.

In order to turn this valuable judicial documentary fund into a documentary heritage at the service of citizens, the instruments for monitoring and tracing the documents created by military judicial bodies have been adapted into tools for searching and tracing specific files. The complete lists of names and files without defendant for the location of information are available on the Defence Cultural Heritage website. On the other hand, those directly related to the war and the first years of the dictatorship continue to be digitized and published.

Judicial cases of the First Territorial Military Court

1898-1070

430,753

It constitutes the most voluminous and consulted background to this file, and is affected by what is stated in Law 20/2022 on Democratic Memory, which, in its article 5, declares illegal and illegitimate the bodies producing this documentation, as well as the nullity of their sentences or sanctions. The assessment, context and interpretation of the information contained therein must take into account what is expressed in the aforementioned law. They offer the possibility of downloading the content in XLSX or CSV files

Information extracted from the Ministry of Defense. General Subdirectorate of Publications and Cultural Heritage

Date of update: 01/27/2023