SCORES of riot police surrounded Spain’s Civil War archives in Salamanca as onlookers shouted, "This is robbery". The city’s mayor made unsuccessful attempts to prevent government trucks parking near the building.

Early yesterday morning state officials began removing 27,000 yellowing documents in 500 boxes from Salamanca, Franco’s civil war base, for delivery to Catalonia, the bastion of anti-Franco Republicans.

Later the conservative-controlled city council made a desperate appeal to Spain’s top court in Madrid to block the removal, but it appeared that the bitter dispute over the so-called "Salamanca papers" that has split Spain’s Left and Right since Franco’s death in 1975 was finally over.

Conservatives were left fuming that José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s socialist Prime Minister, had acted simply to appease Catalan nationalists, upon whose support his minority Government depends.

The papers have great symbolic value to Catalonians. They include secret police reports on Republican sympathisers and anti-Fascist groups during the Civil War, and details about individuals who disappeared during the Franco era.

The papers were taken from Catalonia after the Civil War in 1939, and sent to Salamanca, in western Spain, to help Franco´s Commission for the Repression of Free Masonry and Communism.

After the revival of democracy in 1978, Catalonia’s repeated attempts to retrieve the documents were thwarted by conservative Popular Party governments. Felipe González, the previous Socialist Prime Minister, also stalled.

But Senor Zapatero authorised the movement of the papers to Barcelona after he promised justice for the victims of the Franco years. He has yet to make good on his election pledge to re-examine scores of complex claims by alleged victims of judicial miscarriages under Franco.

Since the Government’s intentions became clear there have been a series of stormy demonstrations outside the archives. At one point protestors who opposed the movement of the papers locked themselves inside the building.

But in Catalonia yesterday there was rejoicing. Caterina Mieras, Catalan regional government culture spokesman, said: "Now we can open a new era on an important day for all democrats."

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