At the dawn of the 21st century, when the welfare society is written on all the pages of our lives and an evolution that is appropriate to the age in which we happen to live is demanded from us, the Guardia Civil, Institution of a military nature with more than 150 years of existence and deployed in the whole country and its territorial sea, offers the citizens of a united and caring Europe an efficient answer to the problems that the complex idea of understanding security as a common job involves. Owing to this, the priority aim of the Guardia Civil is the implementation of the latest technology, combined with the working spirit that pervades its members, with the intention of providing the society that it serves with the best and most efficient answer to the challenge that the current delinquency represents. If there is something characteristic of this Institution, it is its great ability to adapt to the changes and the new social, technological and cultural reality that the current society is experiencing. With this premise, the Guardia Civil has faced, with the same efficiency, not only the rural brigandage of the 19th century, but also the groups of violent people who are acting in some of our cities nowadays, the local smuggling and the drug dealing network, the unsafe paths from one hundred years ago and the traffic security of the modern motorways. It has gone from the traditional vigilance of hunting and fishing to the comprehensive protection of the environment, and from the livestock theft to the defence of our vast national heritage.
Nowadays the Institution has a flexible and operative organisation at its disposal, adapted to the political and administrative reality of the Nation, fundamentally focusing on its duty of serving the citizens. And with this vocation, the Guardia Civil is a pioneer on the investigation of computer and cybernetic crimes, genetic identification or speech analysis, and the defence and protection of the environment. But the most important challenges of the Institution are, because of the seriousness involved, terrorism, drug traffic, illegal immigration, organised crime, aggressions against the environment and those crimes related to technology.
Terrorism is one of the main threats that Eastern Countries have to confront, and Spain is suffering from it with a special intensity, as a result of the terrorist group ETA. The Guardia Civil is fighting against this blot, using all the legal means available, regardless of the effort and resources, in order to produce results.
The irregular and massive immigration, and the spectrum of crimes it sometimes foments, whose first symptoms are becoming a reality in our country, constitutes another important challenge to face. The Guardia Civil has answered this phenomenon by designing an ambitious project on the control of the southern border, whose aim to obtain a comprehensive security of our frontier zone, in order to confront the threat that illegal immigration and drug traffic involve for Spain and Europe. It is obvious that the responsibility of Spain for a stricter control of the southern border has been increased, owing to the disappearence of the interior frontiers, and favoured by the Schengen Executive Committee Decision. Under this kind of situation, these threats turn into an overall risk for the security of the European Union, whose responsibility falls on the Guardia Civil, an institution that, because of its nature and competence, is the appropriate force to solve this problem.
The Guardia Civil has equally given an answer to another current threat : drug traffic. This Police Force, with its Organised Crime and Drug Squads, under the competence of the Judicial Police, promotes the co-ordination and the exchange of information among the European state security forces, in order to intensify the investigation against this kind of crime.
On the other hand, in order to fight the improper use of the numerous possibilities that the latest technology and the society of information involve, the Guardia Civil has a high Tech Crime Squad, which is turned into it into a pioneering force on the investigation and pursuit of computer crimes and the ways of conduct related to technology abuses. In the same way, the Institution keeps in permanent touch with the world specialised police forces, taking part in international seminaries and collaborating with experts on crimes in connection with the technology of information.

Other problems like environmental pollution, the protection of the fauna and the flora, and the fight against toxic waste, represent a challenge for society and, consequently, for the Guardia Civil as a state environmental police. In that sense, the Guardia Civil has attained an ambitious boosting of the Environmental Protection Service (SEPRONA), consolidating it as the first and most efficient environmental police in the whole world, and serving as a model for many other countries. In order to face all these needs and other ones that our society requires , and to render a better service to the citizens, the Guardia Civil has a highly specialised staff and specific means, that allows to give an appropriate answer. Currently, the Guardia Civil has Services and Specialities as valuable, operative and important as the Rural Security Group (Riot Police) and the Group in charge of controlling Road Traffic, the Bomb-disposal Squads, Fiscal Police, the Environmental Protection Service, the Canine Service, the Maritime and Aerial Service, Judicial Police, the Mountain Rescue Forces, or the Groups of Underwater Operations, not to mention the particular Rural Service, which form the backbone and the "raison d'être" of the Institution. They all complement and interrelate each other's duties, to achieve a better efficiency.
We mustn't forget two fundamental aspects that the Guardia Civil strongly believes in: the international co-operation and the participation of the Institution in military missions. In this respect, the Guardia Civil takes a highly active part in the construction of a common space of security and freedom for Europe. The international peacekeeping operations have revealed a new concept of multifunctional operations, that requires, as well as a military component, police contingents, better trained for implementing certain missions. And the United Nations understood it that way. On the other hand, it is no novelty for the Institution. The missions of the Guardia Civil abroad were shyly initiated in 1894, in Guatemala. Nearly one hundred years later, the Guardia Civil has returned to El Salvador and Guatemala, this time as a member of the peacekeeping missions or fulfilment of the human rights, under the auspices of the UN. Under UN, OSCE, NATO or WEU mandate, more than three thousand Guardias Civiles have taken part in different missions for the maintenance of peace. We have left behind, as well as ONUSAL, ONUMOZ (Mozambique), EUNELSA (South America), UNAMIR (Rwanda), Palestine, Santo Tome, Angola and the first missions in the former Yugoslavia, including the Danube Distraint. In Bosnia Herzegovina, the Guardia Civil is, in fact, the only force that has participated in all the peacekeeping forces of that country: the NATO Stabilisation Force (SFOR), the UN International Police Task Force (IPTF), the Security of the United Nations High Representative, and the Joint Police of Mostar. An International participation from its double view, police and military.
Because of all this, the Guardia Civil is a modern, flexible, multi-faceted, and efficient force. Equipped with the latest technology, staffed with more than 70.000 men and women, more specialised every day, and with a more effective organisation and management, in order to adapt the quick evolution of society, the international commitment, Spain's integration into the European Union, the military missions and the co-ordination with other police forces.

The web site : www.guardiacivil.org