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Bandits and Banditry

Perot Rocaguinarda and 'Don Quixote'

Joan de Serrallonga

Nyerros and Cadells


dimarts, 11 de novembre de 2008
Last week Catalan Television showed a two-part series entitled 'Serrallonga, Legend of a Bandit', based on the life of bandit Joan Sala Ferrer, better known as Joan de Serrallonga. The series serves as an opportunity to talk about banditry and about two of Catalonia's most famous bandits: Joan de Serrallonga (1594-1634) and Perot Rocaguinarda (1582-1635).

The first thing to say is that, in the Catalan Countries, banditry was a social phenomenon that had a political impact during the 16th and 17th centuries. It was particularly intense between 1540 and 1640, when the Guerra dels Segadors (Catalan Revolt) started, in which Catalonia fought against the Hispanic monarchy.

In Catalonia, a distinction is made between two types of banditry: aristocratic and popular. The former was practiced by the increasingly impoverished lesser rural nobility, whereas the latter was carried out by peasants, oppressed by the heavy burden imposed on them by the nobility. However, the line separating the two was very fine and often became blurred, as it did during the first decades of the 17th century in particular, as a result of the social, economic and political crisis that affected Catalonia at the time.

The authorities, starting with the viceroy, who was the king's representative in Catalonia, had great difficulties in combating banditry. The bandits knew the country very well and found refuge in recesses in the mountains. They also had the complicity of the people, either out of sympathy or out of fear.

Perot Rocaguinarda and 'Don Quixote'


+ Perot Rocaguinarda's signature.
Sooner or later, most bandits were captured and executed. But that was not the case with Perot Rocaguinarda who, in 1611, took part in an amnesty to enlist in the army of the Hispanic monarchy in Italy. The son of prosperous peasants in Oristà (Osona), Rocaguinarda had great leadership qualities and, for ten years, was Catalonia's most prominent bandit. The fame he built up was related by Miguel de Cervantes in his novel 'Don Quixote'. In Cervantes’ famous tale, Rocaguinarda accompanies Quixote during his visit to Barcelona.

Joan de Serrallonga


+ Joan de Serrallonga. Romantic engraving.
Yet more famous was Joan de Serrallonga, son of a peasant family in Viladrau (Osona). Early on Serrallonga combined petty theft with his work as a peasant. However, he went on to become the undisputed leader of a gang of bandits that also included his siblings. Brave and opposed to the centralism of Spain, he managed to escape on countless occasions. Finally arrested in 1633 near the Agustí farmhouse at Santa Coloma de Farners (Selva), following a tip-off from the heir to the farmhouse, Serrallonga was brutally executed the following year. Serrallonga's actions became legendary through both people and literature, turning him into a hero who stole from the rich to help the poor.

Nyerros and Cadells


+ Both Perot Rocaguinarda and Joan de Serrallonga were Nyerro bandits.
Both Perot Rocaguinarda and Joan de Serrallonga were Nyerro bandits. Catalan nobility was, at the time, divided between two opposing factions: the Nyerros and the Cadells, both dating back to the 13th century. The conflict between the two groups was at its height around the 16th and 17th centuries and affected every sphere of Catalan society: institutions, municipalities and banditry itself, with Nyerro and Cadell bandits.

MATERIALS

QUE HO SABIES?

  • Joan Sala Ferrer took the alias Serrallonga from his wife, Margarida Tallades, heiress of the Serrallonga de Querós farmhouse, in Sant Hilari Sacalm (Selva).
  • It is said, although not for certain, that a road in Barcelona, Perot lo Lladre is a reference to Perot Rocaguinarda.

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Auca d'en Joan de Serrallonga.
Les muntanyes de les Guilleries i del Montseny, que en Serrallonga tenia apamades.
Sonet del Rector de Vallfogona dedicat a Perot Rocaguinarda.
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