1894: Santiago Salvador, William Tell bomber
Add comment November 21st, 2019 Headsman
Spanish terrorist Santiago Salvador died to the garrot on this date in 1894.
A central-casting figure from the heyday of anarchist bomb attacks on bourgeois society, Salvador highlighted the November 7, 1893 premier of opera season at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu by chucking a couple of Orsini bombs from the balcony during the second act of William Tell.*
“My wish was to destroy bourgeois society,” he would explain. “I did not set out to kill certain people. I was indifferent to killing one or the other. My desire was to sow terror.” A more specific provocation (cited by Salvador at his trial) was the execution one month before of another anarchist, Paulino Pallas.
Salvador successfully escaped the scene amid the confusion and the hunt for him licensed a year of martial law with a plethora of offices ransacked and subversives sweated.
The man died with the requisite cry of Viva la Anarchia! upon his lips; however, anarchist violence in his parts did greatly abate in the ensuing couple of years, with the main theater of the propaganda-of-the-deed tendency now shifting to France.
* France’s Le Petit Journal had an explosive illustration of the event on the cover of its 26 November issue.
On this day..
- 1859: Yoshida Shoin, samurai sage - 2018
- 1853: Nathaniel Mobbs - 2017
- 1887: Joseph Morley - 2016
- 1834: James Graves, Trail of Tears precursor - 2015
- 1721: Christiana Bell - 2014
- 1797: Figaro the Elder and Jean Louis, Charleston slaves of Dominguan exiles - 2013
- 2012: Ajmal Kasab, 26/11 Mumbai terrorist - 2012
- 1944: French collaborator in Rennes - 2011
- 1920: Bloody Sunday in Ireland - 2010
- 1803: Johannes Bückler, "Schinderhannes" - 2009
- 1942: Partisans by the Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger - 2008
- 1944: An unknown Allied airman - 2007
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Arts and Literature,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,Execution,Garrote,History,Murder,Public Executions,Revolutionaries,Spain,Strangled,Terrorists,Torture
Tags: 1890s, 1894, anarchism, anarchist, anarchists, barcelona, november 21, opera, paulino pallas, photography, santiago salvador, william tell
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