DNI please?
Spain has a deep-rooted culture of identification, and ID cards are requested in the most unexpected situations. I often have to provide my ID number for local theatre bookings, guided walks in towns and the countryside, and even during routine health enquiries by email. Buying a mobile phone or SIM card without identification is impossible. My own document is a TIE, a foreigner's identity card; Spaniards carry the DNI - the National Identity Document. These cards were introduced in 1951, under the Franco dictatorship, as an instrument of population control.
As with many initiatives of the period, the idea long predated its execution. A decree was signed in Madrid by the Generalísimo himself in 1944, but nothing tangible occurred for seven years. Only in 1951 did the system finally come into force and the first documents were issued. Franco claimed number one, his wife Doña Carmen Polo number two, and their daughter number three. The Royal Family, hedging its bets, reserved numbers 10 to 99.
In its earliest form, acquiring the DNI was an event. Applicants had to travel to the provincial capital, often for the first time in their lives. In 1951, roads were still little more than tracks. People dressed formally for the event and approached the process with trepidation. Encounters with the police were not taken lightly, and compliance was essential.
The original DNI bore little resemblance to today’s credit-card-sized document. It was a green booklet—el librito verde—the winning design in a national competition. It recorded an extraordinary amount of personal information: parents’ names and professions, the holder’s own occupation or position, their address, and fingerprints. It was littered with symbols of the regime. Documents to classify, define and constrain.
That same logic persists in milder form today. Like the cinema ticket, entitlement exists only once it has been proven. A statement is insufficient; there must be a card, a number or a stamp. In this sense, identity documents resemble bovine, ovine and caprine ear tags: they reduce the individual to a set of data points that benefit whoever is doing the checking.
Early DNIs ranked citizens according to social and economic status. Profession was the first marker, signalling immediately where someone stood. Doctors were almost certainly treated differently from farm labourers, but the system extended beyond informal prejudice. Citizens were divided into four official categories, from the wealthiest and most prominent to the so-called “solemnly poor”. This classification was not symbolic; it served administrative and fiscal purposes. Ironically, the very poorest were exempt from the fees required to obtain the document.
Fingerprinting was the most tangible part of the process. Biometrics in the 1950s meant a thick black ink pad, not a scanner. Fingers were pressed and rolled onto paper, often imperfectly. Many must have left the police station clutching their green booklet with a black-stained finger that would not wash clean for days—a visible reminder of having been catalogued, numbered and filed.
Colour, too, carried meaning. While the earliest DNIs were green, later versions adopted different colours and shades to denote civil or administrative status. An official could infer a great deal at a glance, including whether a person belonged to a group requiring special scrutiny.
The DNI was conceived explicitly as a tool of surveillance and control. It ensured that every Spaniard was not merely identified by name, but indexed by class, utility and status. Only in the 1980s, following the transition to democracy, were many of the most intrusive elements—such as profession and parental details—removed. Nonetheless the card is still not there to benefit the holder; its purpose remains one of control.
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