Sacamantecas ("Fat extractor" in Spanish) or mantequero''Al Sur de Granada'', pages 190-193,

Gerald Brenan Edward FitzGerald "Gerald" Brenan, CBE, Military Cross, MC (7 April 1894 – 19 January 1987) was a British writer and hispanist who spent much of his life in Spain. Brenan is probably best known for ''The Spanish Labyrinth'', a historical wo ...

, 1997, Fábula - Tusquets Editores. Originally ''

South from Granada ''South from Granada: Seven Years in an Andalusian Village'' is an autobiographical book by Gerald Brenan, first published in 1957. Brenan, a fringe member of the Bloomsbury Group, settled in Spain in 1920, and lived there on and off for the r ...

'', 1957 ("Fat seller/maker") is the Spanish name for a kind of

bogeyman The bogeyman (; also spelled or known as bogyman, bogy, bogey, and, in US English, also boogeyman) is a mythical creature typically used to frighten children into good behavior. Bogeymen have no specific appearances, and conceptions vary drast ...

Sacamantecas
in the Diccionario de la Real Academia Española or criminal characterized by killing for

human fat Human fat was mentioned in European pharmacopoeias since the 16th century as an important fatty component of quality deemed ointments and other pharmaceuticals in Europe. In old recipes human adipose tissue was mentioned as ''Pinguedo hominis'' ...

Anthropology

Julian Pitt-Rivers Julian Alfred Lane Fox Pitt-Rivers (16 March 1919 – 12 August 2001) was a British social anthropologist, an ethnographer, and a professor at universities in three countries. Family background Pitt-Rivers was a great-grandson of the archaeolo ...

reports
The People of the Sierra
', J. A. Pitt-Rivers, page 205, 1954, Criterion Books, New York. in his study of

Alcalá de la Sierra Alcalá, Alcalà or Alcala may refer to: People *Alcalá (surname), includes a list of people with that name Places Bolivia * Alcalá (Tomina), a town in Bolivia Colombia * Alcalá, Valle del Cauca, Colombia Philippines *Alcala, Cagayan, a mun ...

, the belief that village children can be stolen by an outsider, called ''el sacamantecas'', disguised as a beggar or a trader, who is hired by a rich man whose ill child can only be cured with the blood of healthy babies. The practice of

blood donation A 'blood donation'' occurs when a person voluntarily has blood drawn and used for transfusions and/or made into biopharmaceutical medications by a process called fractionation (separation of whole blood components). A donation may be of wh ...

lent credence to the myth.

describes the ''mantequero'' as a monster in human form who lives in deserted areas and feeds on ''manteca''manteca
in the DRAE ("

human Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are Hominidae, great apes characterized by their Prehistory of nakedness and clothing ...

fat In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers specif ...

"). Upon capture, he shouts in a high-pitched voice and, unless just fed, looks thin. Brenan found the myth alive during his stays in the

Alpujarra The Alpujarra (, ) is a natural and historical region in Andalusia, Spain, on the south slopes of the Sierra Nevada and the adjacent valley. The average elevation is above sea level. It extends over two provinces, Granada and Almería; i ...

(Andalusia). In 1927 or 1928, he had sublet his

Yegen Yegen (Spanish: ) is a village of the municipality of Alpujarra de la Sierra in the province of Granada. The village was the home of the British writer Gerald Brenan in the 1920s, and he described its customs in ''South from Granada'', one of his ...

home to the British writer Dick Strachey, nephew of

Lytton Strachey Giles Lytton Strachey (; 1 March 1880 – 21 January 1932) was an English writer and critic. A founding member of the Bloomsbury Group and author of ''Eminent Victorians'', he established a new form of biography in which psychology, psychologic ...

. One day, Strachey was walking on rough terrain where he saw three

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnic groups * Romani people, or Roma, an ethnic group of Indo-Aryan origin ** Romani language, an Indo-Aryan macrolanguage of the Romani communities ** Romanichal, Romani subgroup in the United Kingdom * Romanians (Romanian ...

men, of whom he was suspicious. Fearing that they were bandits, he ran away, but the three men chased him and drew their knives, shouting at him. They believed him to be a ''mantequero'' and wanted to kill him and to use his blood for magical remedies. However, the eldest man, a convict, judged it safer to bring Strachey to the mayor. They offered to slit his throat themselves, but Strachey claimed in rudimentary Spanish to be a relative of the British

King George V George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936. George was born during the reign of his pa ...

and convinced the mayor that he wasn't a monster. A friend of Brenan found that in

Torremolinos Torremolinos () is a municipality in Andalusia, southern Spain, west of Málaga. A poor fishing village before the growth in tourism began in the late 1950s, Torremolinos was the first of the Costa del Sol resorts to be developed and is still th ...

all the girls believed in ''mantequeros''. In the urban version of the legend, an old evil marquis needs transfusions of babies' blood to rejuvenate.

Real sacamantecas

Manuel Blanco Romasanta Manuel Blanco Romasanta (né Manuela; 18 November 1809 – 14 December 1863) was Spain's first recorded serial killer. In 1853, he admitted to thirteen murders but claimed he was not responsible because he was suffering from a curse that caused ...

(1809-1863) was the first serial killer documented in Spain. He operated in Galicia. With the fat of his victims he made soap for sale. During his trial, he alleged to be cursed with

lycanthropy In folklore, a werewolf (), or occasionally lycanthrope (from Ancient Greek ), is an individual who can shapeshifting, shapeshift into a wolf, or especially in modern film, a Shapeshifting, therianthropic Hybrid beasts in folklore, hybrid wol ...

. * Juan Díaz de Garayo (1821-1881) was a Spanish serial killer operating in Northern Spain. He was nicknamed ''el Sacamantecas'', which became used to scare children into behaving. * In 1910

Francisco Leona Francisco is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the masculine given name ''Franciscus''. Meaning of the name Francisco In Spanish, people with the name Francisco are sometimes nicknamed " Paco". San Francisco de Asís was known as ''Pater Comm ...

and Julio ''Tonto'' Hernández kidnapped and killed a boy of seven years for his blood and fat to treat the tuberculosis of Francisco Ortega, a wealthy farmer who hired the men for that purpose in what is known as the

Crime of Gádor The crime of Gádor is the name given to the kidnapping and subsequent murder of seven-year-old Bernardo González Parra, which took place on June 28, 1910 in Gádor, Almería, Spain. The purpose of the crime was to use the child's blood and body ...

Similar beliefs

*The Peruvian tradition of the

pishtaco A (in Northern Quechua "slaughterer, cutthroat"), (in Southern Quechua, similar meaning) or (in Aymara language, Aymara,"slaughterer") is a folkloric boogeyman figure in the Andes region of South America, particularly in Peru and Bolivia, whic ...

has many similarities being understood as monsters or foreigners who collect human fat from their victims. *Urban legends about

organ trafficking Organ trade (also known as the blood market or the red market) is the trading of human organs, tissues, or other body products, usually for transplantation.(Carney, Scott. 2011. "The Red Market." Wired 19, no. 2: 112–1. Internet and Personal C ...

show similar fears in modern contexts. *

Vampire A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead humanoid creatures that often visited loved ones and c ...

s in European folklore draw blood from humans. *Brenan finds a similarity between the ''mantequero'' and the Persian ''

manticore The manticore or mantichore (Latin: ''mantichorās''; reconstructed Old Persian: ; Modern ) is a legendary creature from ancient Persian mythology, similar to the Egyptian sphinx that proliferated in Western European medieval art as well. It ha ...

'' (a man-eating chimera cited by H.J. Tarry,

Ctesias Ctesias ( ; ; ), also known as Ctesias of Cnidus, was a Greek physician and historian from the town of Cnidus in Caria, then part of the Achaemenid Empire. Historical events Ctesias, who lived in the fifth century BC, was physician to the Acha ...

' '' Persica'' and

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

's ''

History of Animals ''History of Animals'' (, ''Ton peri ta zoia historion'', "Inquiries on Animals"; , "History of Animals") is one of the major texts on biology by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. It was written in sometime between the mid-fourth centur ...

''). *Other bogeymen in Hispanic culture are the

coco Coco or variants may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film * ''Coco'' (2009 film), a French comedy film * ''Coco'' (2017 film), an American animated fantasy film * '' Pokémon the Movie: Secrets of the Jungle'' (), a 2020 Japanese anime film ...

, the

Sack Man The Sack Man (also called the Bag Man or Man with the Bag/Sack) is a figure similar to the bogeyman, portrayed as a man with a sack on his back who carries naughty children away. Regional traditions Variants of this figure appear all over ...

and the Tío del Saín (

Murcia Murcia ( , , ) is a city in south-eastern Spain, the Capital (political), capital and most populous city of the autonomous community of the Region of Murcia, and the Ranked lists of Spanish municipalities#By population, seventh largest city i ...

In popular culture

Bernardo Atxaga Bernardo Atxaga (born 27 July 1951), pseudonym of Joseba Irazu Garmendia, is a Spanish Basque writer and self-translator. He is a full member of the Royal Academy of the Basque Language since 2006, in November 2010, he was also named a member ...

's ''

Obabakoak ''Obabakoak'' is a 1988 novel by the Basque writer Bernardo Atxaga. The title can be translated as "Stories from Obaba". The book won the National Literature Prize for Narrative. It is the most internationally successful book in Basque and has b ...

'' includes a chapter on the Sacamantecas, stating that it was believed that baby fat was what made railways so fast. *The 2009 Spanish short film Sacamantecas was directed by Alejandro Ballesteros and Antonio Curado.

References

{{Urban legends Urban legends Bogeymen Cannibalism in Europe Folklore Galician mythology Spanish legendary creatures