La Bandera de la Muerta

While in Spain I learned the stories of several Bandoleros, or Bandits, who are present in the 19th and early 20th centuries in primarily Andalucia. While they were usually men driven to crime be sheer poverty, they were also noblemen fleeing the law due to crimes of passion, such as the famous José Ulloa "El Tragabuches", who was a bull fighter, but after killing his wife and her lover turned to a life of crime as he saw no other option. There was the Jose Maria Hinojosa "El Tempranillo"(the Early Bird, so named because he began his life of crime at age 13), the most famous bandit, was known for daring daylight holdups which eventually led the King to grant him a royal pardon in exchange for him agreement to work for the state as the chief catcher of other bandoleros. The bandoleros were highwaymen, smugglers, robbers and contraband runners, so prevelant that the Civil Guard was formed to round them up.

Interest in the bandoleros became romantacized as time went on, with numerous books, movies, operas, even cartoons and comic books chronicling the life of these real life bandits. It became such a crazy that when english tourists would come to Andalucia to see the other sights (Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada), they would pay to get themselves "held up" by a bandolero and his gang. To me this sounds akin to going to Mexico right now and paying to get caught up in the drug cartel. There is even a hotel in Malaga Province that names its name after the Bandits, Hotel Bandolero, and they even have silvery statues of a bandolero and a maiden in their establishment.

Oddly enough, none of the men in our group had interest in seeing the bandolero museum, so the females went in and had a grand old time. It did get me thinking though: if we were in England and there was a Robin Hood Museum, the men would have gone. In the states if there was an Al Capone or Bonnie and Clyde museum they probably would have visited. Why do the spanish versions seem so much less manly? Could it be that they have be romanticised to the point of no longer being viewed as masculine?


Now, I have a pencant for visiting cheesy museums, and this one was actually very well done considering that there was not that much in the way of artifacts that could be put in such a museum. You had your usual wax figures portraying a scene, dioramas of the civil guard raiding a bandit hide out, reproduction weapons on display, and literally hundreds of books and graphic novels telling the tales. There was even a romanticized female bandit novel on display, La Bandera de la Muerta - the female bandit of death. The soundtrack was what you would expect, the haunting spanish guitar playing bits of Bizet's Carmen.


While I don't necessarily condone robbery and banditry, I do find it fascinating how with a little detachment from the situation something as brutish as being a bandit turns into a sex symbol, a persona to make the women swoon and the men want to either join them or hunt them down. I gues the girl always likes the idea of the bad boy, even if the reality is nothing that she would actually want.