Female officers celebrate 40 years in Spain’s Policia Nacional

YESTERDAY (Sunday) marked the 40^th anniversary of the first female officers to join Spain’s national police force.

In March 1978, the official state agency gazette, the BOE published the recruitment process for the Policia Nacional. For the first time in history this included 100 spaces for female officers.

The following year on June 30, these 100 new recruits were officially sworn in and became the benchmark for female officers in Spain.

At present the force is 14 per cent female, similar to the ratio of the Spanish armed forces. However the force is coming ever closer to parity with a proposed 41.2 per cent being promised in the National Police Scientific Commission.

The figures come from the number of recruits entering the academy, with of the 3,200 candidates, 800 being female, a figure that is even higher when the administration and executive side is taken into account.