A musket crossed with a crossbow under the Spanish crown is on the emblem of the Spanish Legion, harking back to the days of the Habsburg Empire when Spain was the world military power. The idea for a foreign legion came from the Spanish Civil war, when a detachment of French Foreign Legion infantry joined the fight to support Queen Isabella. The Spanish were so impressed that they modeled their own legion squarely on the French.

On this day, September 20, in 1920, the first recruit joined the Spanish Foreign Legion, a specially-trained unit designed to replace ineffective conscript troops defending the Spanish North African colonies.

At its inception, the organization had just a handful of men spread across three battalions. In current form, it has 8,000 men and despite being nominally Spanish, it’s also open to citizens born abroad. The Spanish Legion was part of the international military force in Bosnia, took part in the second Iraq War, and in 2006 complemented the work of United Nations forces in South Lebanon.