Spanish Legion

For centuries, Spain recruited foreign soldiers to its armies, forming the foreign regiments (Infantería de línea extranjera) such as the Regiment of Hibernia (formed in 1709 from Irishmen who fled their own country in the wake of the Flight of the Earls and the penal laws). However, the specific unit of the Spanish Army and Spain's Rapid Reaction Force, now known as the Spanish Legion (Legión Española, La Legión), and informally known as the Tercio, is a 20th-century creation. It was raised in the 1920s to serve as part of Spain's Army of Africa. The unit, which was established in January 1920 as the Spanish equivalent of the French Foreign Legion, was initially known as the Tercio de Extranjeros ("Tercio of foreigners"), the name under which it began fighting in the Rif War of 1921–1926.

Over the years, the force's name has changed from Tercio de Extranjeros to Tercio de Marruecos ("Tercio of Morocco", when the field of operations targeted Morocco specifically), and by the end of the Rif War it became the "Spanish Legion", composed of several tercios as sub-units.

The Legion played a major role in the Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. In post-Franco Spain, the modern Legion has undertaken tours of duty in the Yugoslav Wars, Afghanistan, Iraq and Operation Libre Hidalgo UNIFIL.

The Spanish Legion was formed by royal decree of King Alfonso XIII on 28 January 1920, with the Minister of War José Villalba Riquelme [es] stating, "With the designation of Foreigners Regiment there will be created an armed military unit, whose recruits, uniform and regulations by which they should be governed will be set by the Minister of War". However, traditionally the Legion has held 20 September 1920, the day the first Legionnaire enlisted, as its founding date.

Historically there had been a "Spanish Foreign Legion" which preceded the modern Legion's formation in 1920. On 28 June 1835, the French government had decided to hand the French Foreign Legion over to the Spanish government in support of Queen Isabella's claim to the throne during the First Carlist War. The French Foreign Legion, with around 4,000 men, landed at Tarragona on 17 August 1835. This became the French Auxilliary Division until it was disbanded on 8 December 1838, when it had dropped to only 500 men.

The Spanish Legion was originally called the Tercio de Extranjeros (Tercio of Foreigners) when created in 1920. The word tercio is an old Spanish military term that applies to a type of military administrative organisation of the Spanish Habsburg era, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The title of "tercio" was chosen to evoke the era of Spain's military supremacy under the Habsburg monarchy. The title in the original name and in that of its regiments is purely honorific; the Spanish Legion is organised regimentally and never was a tercio or tercios.

The Spanish Legion was modelled on the French Foreign Legion. Its purpose was to provide a corps of professional troops to fight in Spain's colonial campaigns in North Africa, in place of conscript units that were proving ineffective. The first commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel José Millán-Astray Terreros, referred to his unit as ‘La Legión’ from the start but this only became part of the unit's title from 1937.

In the original Tercio de Extranjeros there were Latin Americans, amongst others, one Chinese, three Japanese, one Maltese, one Russian, both German & Austrian, one Italian, two Frenchmen, four Portuguese, one Belgian, unknown Filipino and one Spanish woman from Puerto Rico. However, soon the majority of its members were Spaniards who joined to fight outside of European Spain.^{[citation needed]}