Constellations for the Santa Fe Police

That would be Santa Fe, Argentina. Bob Murdoch of the REOC sent these pictures to David Blasco of royalenfields.com. At first it was not clear what Santa Fe they were referring to, the most obvious one being Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, since several police departments in the US had Royal Enfield motorcycles. Except that the uniforms and scenery looked off for US police. David got Graham Scarth at the REOC to confirm that 30 Constellations were sent to Casa Iturrat in Buenos Aires in April 1964. That led them to identify the building in the background as the Casa de Justicia de Santa Fe in front of the Plaza 25 de Mayo in Santa Fe, Argentina. This is quite a remarkable find since not much of the building can be seen, and the plaza has been renovated and looks somewhat different. The Casa de Justicia is where the provincial high court is located. Here is a Google Street view, more or less from the same angle,

And here is a front shot of the building, also from Google,

They sent the information to me thinking I could add something since I was born in Argentina. Unfortunately the only thing I can add is that I have actually been in that Plaza (my mother was from Santa Fe), but could find little additional information about the bikes. There is an online archive of Santa Fe newspapers, but their search function does not work well, and trying to peruse all newspapers from 1964 in the format they present them appeared like a very cumbersome task.

I did not have much luck either finding out about Casa Iturrat. It appears to have been a large importer, primarily of paper and typewriters and other publishing items, but obviously seems to have ventured into other items. None of the addresses I found for them correspond to old buildings so it appears nothing is left of them. It seems to have been the property of José Iturrat, who was also a philanthropist that did some remarkable things. Like the creation of a residence for Jewish kids that survived the Holocaust (he was not Jewish) that lasted until in 2008.  Or help preserve some watercolors by Galileo Galilei that someone escaping from the fascists in Italy took to Argentina together with a large library that now belongs to the University of Buenos Aires.

I was about to give all hope when I landed on this Facebook post by Franco Cipolla, which includes these pictures,

He comments that the first photo is of motorcycles destined to three police outposts in the province and the second is another shot of the 1964 machines, in the same plaza as above, but now lined up in front of the "Grey House", the offices of the Governor of the province. Here is a shot from Google Street view,

The pictures are from the local police museum which apparently has a 1936 Harley Davidson in display.