The number of armed people in Barcelona was quite large due to the assault on the San Andrés Barracks, after which 30,000 rifles had been seized and were scattered throughout the city.
During their short period of existence, these groups detained and executed many members of the Church, Carlists, and other people accused of being fascist or pro-nationalist in Barcelona and the surrounding areas.
[3] This revolutionary public order force acted in parallel to the Police Headquarters under the direction of the Junta de Seguridad del Comité.
Numerous murders and crimes were taking place, with FAI releasing a document dated 30 July in which it distances itself from the excess violence:"An Investigation Committee functions as an appendix to the Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias, which will take care of verifying all the denunciations that are made about the activities of the elements involved in the past fascist movement.
And the FAI is willing to put an end to those groups of the unconscious, outside the control of our Organization, who, who knows for what purposes, dishonor the revolutionary movement of the people, who have taken up arms against fascism.
We do not know what elements these are, but we affirm with energy, whoever they are, they are denounced by their own actions, in the best of cases, as cloudy souls, in which the just instinct of the people is adulterated, awakening primitive voices nested in the darkest of his conscience."
[5] The Patrols were the work of the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias of Catalonia, and were promoted by the CNT and the FAI, and later supported by the rest of the Popular Front organizations to put an end to the violent chaos which occurred in Barcelona.
According to this version, the detainees were taken to the dungeons of detention centers where they were tortured and finally executed after being taken to an isolated place; the euphemistically called paso (meaning ride/walk).
[3] The Control Patrols played this violent role during events such as the persecution of the Maristas in Barcelona in 1936, with 172 people being executed during the months of July to October of that year.
In addition to Aiguader, who was the chairman, participators from ERC included Miquel Guinart and Joan Pons Garlandí; from CNT Vicente Gil Mata, Dionisio Eroles and Aurelio Fernández (the latter as general secretary); from PSUC Rafael Vidiella Franch and Joaquín Olaso; from Josep Coll; and from Unió de Rabassaires Cristóbal Rebull.
The general commissioner of public order, the director of local administration and the head of central services of the security department attended as technical assistants.
Immediately, the power struggle started between CNT, which intended to be an entity independent of the government, and ERC and PSUC, who wanted the Board to be an annex to the interior security adviser.
Given the prevalence of CNT militants in the patrols, ERC and PSUC parties constantly complained about the sorry state of internal security in Catalonia and about the patrolmen being incapable of maintaining public order.
[8] The way in which supplies were managed in Barcelona was in practice a covert political struggle between the Generalitat and neighborhood committees, which were the bodies created after the July 1936 revolution.
The tension produced confrontations, and at the same time, repression, revenge and settling accounts that tensed the atmosphere, in the midst of the suffering caused by the war.
The events of May marked the end of the patrols, since they were part of the revolutionary order that had prevailed in Barcelona since the first days of the war, which had been politically defeated in May.
Some patrols sided with the CNT defense committees, the Libertarian Youth, the Friends of Durruti and the POUM armed groups.
The SIM reused most of the detention centers and put into practice more systematic and brutal methods of repression, not only against those suspected of being fascists but also against POUM militants and the anarchists.