Myth and reality: the strange case of the Black Hand in 1883

Abstract

The affair of the Black Hand, a supposed secret organization which would have operated in the rural areas of western Andalusia has kept shrouded in mystery due to an accumulation of unproven historical interpretations, which presented it as a powerful criminal organization, as a group of heroic revolutionaries or as a police invention. This article, based in judicial, journalist and police sources, denies these interpretations and explains the entanglement of myths and realities which makes the true history of the Black Hand. To that end it makes a micro historical analyse of a crucial case, the so called Parrilla murder.