Ministry of the Interior (Spain)

Overview

The Ministry of the Interior (Spain) — the Ministerio del Interior — is the Spanish government department responsible for public security, policing, prisons, civil protection, road safety, migration and international protection. Founded in its modern form by the Cortes of Cádiz in 1812, it commands the National Police Corps and the Civil Guard, and has been led since 2018 by Fernando Grande-Marlaska (Ministry of the Interior; Library of Congress Country Studies; Mauritanian News Agency).

It is not the United States Department of the Interior, which manages public lands, national parks and tribal trust responsibilities rather than policing. Spain’s ministry is a security department: its remit runs from the two national police forces through prisons, civil protection, traffic and the National Registry of Associations, as its 2026 structure shows (BOE; BOE). Its headquarters are at Paseo de la Castellana 5 in Madrid, the address on the ministry’s own press releases (Directorate-General for Traffic).

Two centuries of reinvention: from Gobernación to Interior

Its remote antecedent was a secretariat created by Philip V in 1717; the modern department traces to the Peninsular War, when Joseph Bonaparte created a Ministry of the Interior by decree in February 1809 and the Cortes of Cádiz created the Secretariat of State and of the Office of the Governance of the Kingdom under article 222 of the Constitution of 19 March 1812 (Ministry of the Interior). It was then suppressed and restored with each political turn — abolished in 1814, restored in 1820, suppressed again, briefly a single Ministry of the Interior in 1823 — before Ferdinand VII re-established it by Royal Decree of 9 November 1832 (Ministry of the Interior).

In 1847 the public works, education, agriculture and commerce portfolios were carved out into a new department, the Ministry of Development, leaving it with public order, local administration, health, prisons and the mail (Ministry of the Interior). The Civil Guard was transferred from the Ministry of War to the ministry in 1932 (Ministry of the Interior). During the Civil War the Nationalists split it into Ministries of the Interior and of Public Order in 1938 and merged them back the same year (Ministry of the Interior). The democratic transition stripped it back: Royal Decree 1558/1977 renamed it the Ministry of the Interior and moved health, mail and telecommunications elsewhere, and the 1978 Police Act put a Director of State Security under the minister to command the police corps and the Civil Guard (Ministry of the Interior). The one later interruption was the 1994–1996 merger with Justice, after which the ministry resumed its present name (Ministry of the Interior).

What the ministry runs today

Royal Decree 207/2024 as amended by Royal Decree 328/2026 gives the ministry four top-level pillars under the minister (BOE).

Top-level body	What sits under it
Secretary of State for Security	Directorate-General of the Police; Directorate-General of the Civil Guard; Directorate-General for International Relations and Immigration; Directorate-General for Coordination and Studies
Secretary-General for Penitentiary Institutions	Directorate-General for Criminal Sentence Enforcement and Social Reintegration
Secretary-General for Civil Protection and Emergencies	Directorate-General for Civil Protection and Emergencies
Under-Secretary of the Interior	Technical General Secretariat; Directorate-General for Internal Policy; Directorate-General for Traffic; Directorate-General for Support to Victims of Terrorism; Directorate-General for International Protection

Spain has two national police forces, and the settlement between them dates to the democratic transition. The 1978 Constitution states that the Security Corps and Forces, responsible to the Government, have as their mission “the protection of the free exercise of rights and liberties and the guaranteeing of the safety of citizens” (article 104), and the Organic Law on the Security Corps and Forces of March 1986 merged the uniformed and plainclothes civilian police into the single National Police Corps (Library of Congress Country Studies). The Civil Guard remained a separate paramilitary force with close links to the army, serving mainly as a rural police, but in operational matters it answers to the Interior rather than the Defence minister, reverting only in war or emergency. A Secretary of State for Security was created in 1986 to coordinate the two forces (Library of Congress Country Studies).

Beyond policing, it runs prisons through the Secretary-General for Penitentiary Institutions, road safety through the Directorate-General for Traffic, and support to victims of terrorism and international protection through directorates under the Under-Secretary (BOE). It also keeps the National Registry of Associations and declares associations of public utility by ministerial order: in April 2006 it did so for APASCIDE, the association of families of people with deafblindness, registered as no. 104483 (BOE). And in January 2026 its traffic directorate opened a national registry for personal mobility vehicles — an estimated 4 million electric scooters circulate on Spanish urban roads — as the prior step to compulsory insurance under Law 5/2025 (Directorate-General for Traffic).

The ministry in 2026: civil protection, Ceuta and hate crime

The most consequential structural change of 2026 came in April, when Royal Decree 328/2026 created a General Secretariat for Civil Protection and Emergencies reporting directly to the minister, taking over the functions previously held by the Directorate-General for Civil Protection and Emergencies (BOE). The decree’s reasoning is blunt: emergencies have become more frequent, more complex and simultaneous, with graver consequences. Under the new secretariat sit three sub-directorates — anticipation and preparation (including the National School of Civil Protection), planning and emergency management (running the CENEM coordination centre), and resilience and recovery — operating under Law 17/2015 on the National Civil Protection System (BOE). The minister holds the highest authority in civil protection, coordinating with the autonomous communities and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla as well as with supranational and international organisations (EU Civil Protection Knowledge Network).

The summer of 2026 tested the ministry at the border: after a mass irregular entry into Ceuta on 30 and 31 July, its response brought National Police and Civil Guard personnel in the city to 1,600 agents (Demócrata; EFE). In August the minister told Congress the government was seeking €35.6 million in European funds for Ceuta — mainly to extend the El Tarajal and Benzú breakwaters, install a fixed maritime containment system of anchored buoys, and build a permanent 800-person Temporary Foreigners’ Care Center, 90% EU co-financed — alongside a €66.6 million second phase of the State Security Infrastructure Plan for 2026–2034 (Demócrata). In October, from Ceuta itself, Grande-Marlaska insisted there had been “no covert returns” to Morocco, saying the 12,000 people who had left did so through voluntary returns or judicial or administrative rulings (EFE).

The ministry’s other public-facing numbers in 2026 came from hate-crime reporting: its 2025 report counted 2,417 hate incidents — the highest since recording began in 2014 — including 69 antisemitic incidents, up from 37 in 2024, and Islamophobic attacks up from 15 to 35, with racism and xenophobia the largest category at 934 (The Forward). The release also showed the ministry’s dual role: the department that commands the police also publishes the data measuring the country’s hate-crime problem, and the minister used it to call “national priority” policies institutionalised xenophobia (The Forward). The reporting sits inside a formal structure — the ministry’s National Office Against Hate Crimes (ONDOD) runs the Hate Crime Action Plan, now in its 2025–2028 edition, and Spain reports police-recorded hate crimes to the OSCE, which recorded 1,808 for 2024 and 2,268 for 2023 (OSCE).

Year	Police-recorded hate crimes (OSCE/ODIHR)
2024	1,808
2023	2,268
2022	1,869
2021	1,802
2020	1,401

Source: OSCE. These police-recorded counts differ from the ministry’s 2025 figure of 2,417 hate crimes and incidents and are not directly comparable.

Internationally, the minister is Spain’s voice in EU home affairs. In March 2026 Grande-Marlaska attended the EU Council of Home Affairs Ministers in Brussels, pressing to eliminate internal Schengen border controls, for more funding for voluntary return and readmission, and for a stronger Europol as the main centre for police information exchange, while opposing return centres in third countries (La Moncloa). Bilaterally, in November 2026 he was in Nouakchott discussing irregular migration and cross-border crime with Mauritania, whose 2024 partnership agreement with the European Union Spain supports (Mauritanian News Agency).

Frequently asked questions

Is Spain’s Ministry of the Interior the same as the US Department of the Interior? No. Spain’s ministry is a security department that commands the National Police Corps and the Civil Guard and runs prisons, civil protection, road safety, migration and international protection (BOE). The US Department of the Interior manages public lands, national parks and tribal trust responsibilities — a different job that happens to share a name.

Who leads the ministry? Fernando Grande-Marlaska, who has served as Minister of the Interior since 2018 — eight years in the post as of November 2026 — and who represents Spain at EU home affairs councils and in bilateral security talks (Mauritanian News Agency; La Moncloa).

What police forces does the ministry command? Two national forces: the National Police Corps, the unified civilian police created by the 1986 Organic Law, and the Civil Guard, a paramilitary gendarmerie that serves mainly rural areas but answers to the ministry in operational matters rather than the defence ministry (Library of Congress Country Studies).

What changed at the ministry in 2026? Civil protection was elevated in April 2026 to a General Secretariat reporting directly to the minister, with three sub-directorates and the CENEM emergency coordination centre (BOE). The ministry also ran a major border operation in Ceuta after the 30–31 July mass entry (EFE).

How many hate crimes does Spain record? The ministry’s 2025 report counted 2,417 hate crimes and incidents, the highest since recording began in 2014, with racism and xenophobia the largest category at 934 (The Forward). The OSCE separately publishes Spain’s police-recorded hate crimes — 1,808 in 2024 — a different metric (OSCE).

What this profile does not claim

• It asserts no budget or headcount: the €11.1 billion and 205,579-employee figures circulating online rest on Wikipedia-derived material only.
• It does not reconcile the Ceuta entry figures: the minister’s August statement (majority of 72,000 returned within 24 hours) and the October statement (12,000 left) are dated claims from different moments.
• It does not compare the OSCE police-recorded series with the ministry’s crimes-and-incidents series as like-for-like.
• It does not assert the 6 April 1812 decree date, the Secretary of State for Security’s current office-holder, the headquarters’ palace history, or the electoral-process role — none was verified in a fully-read source in this pass.
• It makes no claim about National Police or Civil Guard headcounts, the prison population, or current road-death figures.