1837: Luis Candelas, urban bandit
November 6th, 2020 Headsman
The brigand Luis Candelas was garroted in Madrid on this date in 1837.
Candelas — that’s a Spanish link, as are most available sources on the man — was a bad boy from a bourgeois family with a penchant for high living and high blood, the latter of which got him kicked out of school when a priest slapped him by way of discipine and Candelas repaid him in kind.
From here he went on to the life of a sybaritic picaro, worthy of remembrance in various song and verse.
He was a dashing Don Juan type, smartly dressed and famed for his love of the written word and the opposite sex; he was a triumphant duelist, that noble old sport; and he was the king of a gang of robbers that haunted the taverns of Madrid and won both treasure and popular affection by their exploits.
“Money is badly distributed,” ran one of their reported aphorisms of social banditry, “and it is not fair that while some are dragged in coaches, while others trudge through the mud.”
In this last he had a Jekyll-and-Hyde double life, posing as the respectable Luis Alvarez de Cobos by day only to transform into lovable underworld rogue by night.
As ought to happen to such a romantic desperado, he was betrayed in the end by his heart. Feeling inordinate police heat due to robbing some inordinately important people — the Queen‘s personal dressmaker, the French ambassador — Candelas attempted to slip out of the country with his lover, a woman named Clara. The latter went with him as far as Gijon before she was overcome with longing for hearth and home and convinced Candelas to return to Madrid and ride out the manhunt there. He was caught.
They tried him for 40 different robberies, and he hung with a jaunty “Adiós Patria mía, sé feliz!” (“Farewell, my country, be happy!”)
On this day..
- 1941: Shura Chekalin, Hero of the Soviet Union - 2019
- 1938: Kasym Tynystanov, Kyrgyz intellectual - 2018
- 1717: Three spared en route to Tyburn, thanks to Jack Ketch's debts - 2017
- 1922: Ali Kemal - 2016
- 1863: James Murphy, after a reunion - 2015
- 1964: Vuyisile Mini, Zinakile Mkaba and Wilson Khayingo - 2014
- 1918: Roman Malinovsky, tinker, tailor, soldier, spy - 2013
- 1944: Boy Ecury, Aruban Dutch Resistance hero - 2012
- 1600: Ishida Mitsunari, Konishi Yukinaga and Ankokuji Ekei for the Tokugawa Shogunate - 2011
- 1793: Philippe Egalite, hoisted on his own petard - 2010
- 2003: Four for the oil of Chad - 2009
- 1730: Hans Hermann von Katte, Frederick the Great's lover - 2008
- 1914: Carl Hans Lody - 2007
Entry Filed under: 19th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,Hanged,Outlaws,Public Executions,Spain,Theft
Tags: 1830s, 1837, luis candelas, madrid, november 6, social bandits
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