The Spanish National Police (Policia Nacional) has officially adopted the Springfield Armory Echelon 4.0FC 9mm pistol as the issue pistol for its uniformed officers. The Policía Nacional is the national civilian police force of Spain. Its responsibilities include policing of urban areas and large cities, counter-terrorism operations, immigration enforcement and more.
The duty-grade Echelon, which is fully ambidextrous and striker-fired, was developed in partnership between Springfield Armory and HS Produkt. The pistol was introduced in 2023 and has already been adopted by numerous agencies and departments across the United States.
“Springfield Armory and HS Produkt are extremely honored that the Echelon 4.0FC has been selected by the Spanish National Police to be the issued pistol for its uniformed officers,” said Dennis Reese, owner and CEO of Springfield Armory. “The Echelon family of pistols was designed from the ground up to provide a duty-grade 9 mm pistol ready for a wide range of applications. This adoption by the Spanish National Police further reinforces this fact.”
At the heart of the Echelon lies a patent-pending Central Operating Group, an entirely self-contained and serialized stainless steel chassis, which creates system that is easily moved between available grip modules in seconds. Combined with the pistol’s Variable Interface System, which allows direct mounting of an expansive range of today’s red-dot optics, the handgun provides a highly modular design.
“HS Produkt, in conjunction with Springfield Armory, spent years and countless hours meticulously developing and testing the Echelon platform pistol to be the ultimate duty pistol platform in existence,” said Zeljko Pavlin, CEO of HS Produkt. “Having the Spanish National Police select the Echelon pistol over the competition through the rounds of vigorous testing validates all that has been invested in the design and establishes the Echelon as the premier choice in duty pistols for government and law enforcement use.”
The Echelon 4.0FC variant adopted by the Spanish National Police merges full-size, 17+1/20+1 capacity with a compact 4-inch-barreled slide assembly. Pitted against offerings from numerous international firearm manufacturers, the Echelon 4.0FC—represented by Lejarazu Sport SLU during the process—faced a challenging set of testing protocols. They included intensive shooting and accuracy tests, barrel obstruction testing, durability tests in a range of environments from -4 degrees Fahrenheit to +122 degrees Fahrenheit, drop testing, parts interchangeability verification and more. The Echelon 4.0FC met or exceeded all the requirements and was selected by the evaluation team.
In addition to the exceptional performance of the pistol during the testing, the modularity of the Echelon’s design also stood out during the Spanish National Police’s testing. They noted that the pistol’s ability to be quickly converted to different configurations—such as compact variants, etc.—further ensured that the Echelon would be their choice.
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