Exhibition The masks do not lie: terror, politics and rebellion
Literature Villains and aristocrats, the fascination for white-collar thieves
Myth The 156 robberies of the real Arsène Lupine, the anarchist thief who ended up in prison
In the final chapter of
La casa de papel,
El Professor vindicates with all epic the Spanish tradition of the picaresque: "
El Lazarillo de Tormes was
not written by the English, was it not?" Although Fantomas, the king of thieves, was written by the French (
Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain
), the reality is that he was Spanish: Eduardo Arcos, a sophisticated white-collar criminal, expert in fencing and stunt pilot, who elevated the picaresque to the highest, to a surreal paroxysm. In this story that is not fiction there is
also a national Sherlock Holmes
(Inspector Fernández Luna, whom the thieves called Don Ramón), a human skull and a relationship a la Bonnie & Clyde.
Eddy's exploits (that's what he liked to call himself, especially when he claimed to have been born in New York, even though he was born in Mallorca) inspired the French Fantomas: between 1905 and 1906 he toured the luxury hotels of Paris stealing jewels and banknotes of the highest bourgeoisie and opening safes. He himself pretended to be an aristocrat (El Marquesito was another of his nicknames), but for his robberies
he wore black silk leggings and covered his face with a hood
. He was said to climb buildings and sneak across rooftops, a legend he himself fostered by leaving the windows open and was very convenient for hotels as they didn't have to pay for theft insurance. A ghost ... that gave rise to the first adventures of Fantomas in 1911.
Although the data on Eddy Arcos are sometimes contradictory (it is not clear or when he died) and there are hardly any studies on one of the most brilliant thieves in history, his figure is vindicated in a small section of the exhibition
The Mask Never Lies
of the Center of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB). «The great French character is ours. In fact, it surpasses it. In Madrid in 1916, there was even an episode of 'Sherlock against Fantomas': how Fernández Luna hunted down Eddy in a pension in Malasaña, escaped in court and was arrested again ", says the writer Servando Rocha, who tracked Eddy's clue for his essay
Some Dark and Dangerous Things. The book of the mask and the masked men
.
Despite his arrest, the evidence to charge him was insufficient, no one from the jet set filed a complaint against him (he used to seduce the ladies and cheat on the gentlemen) and he was released.
“Since his photo was everywhere, he could no longer commit a crime.
His face was too familiar.
So when they released him he gave a double somersault and put on a show at the Zorrilla theater in Valladolid in which he spent
six days of fasting inside a tomb.
It was a number of illusionism and escapism ", explains Rocha.
The story of Arcos takes as many twists and turns as a Hollywood movie: his great love with
Leonor Fioravanti
(they were something like Bonnie & Clyde: he was flying at an airshow in Argentina, she fell in love and followed him to Europe, they had a son but -infidelities in between- ended up separating), an alleged
affair
with
Isadora Duncan
, his espionage for the M16 in the 40s ...
And the skull?
Eddy said that she was a lover with whom he was so in love that, when she died, he went to the cemetery, bribed the gravedigger and took his skull to accompany him always.
In his stealthy robberies, he carried the skull, and if the robbed sleeper woke up, Eddy would illuminate it in the dark to make it believe he was dreaming.
A dream that evokes a phrase from Magritte about Fantomas, one of the favorite characters of the surrealists: "Fantomas can only be caught in dreams."
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
culture
literature
art
Barcelona
Catalonia
Majorca
Comic Pepe Carvalho, between the tropical dream and the suburbs: "Confront those above and those below"
The 'sorpasso' of bookstores in Madrid: how they became booming temples when the pandemic threatened to destroy them
MusicMetallica, Dua Lipa, C Tangana ... The stars of the summer in which we will return to the festivals
See links of interest
Last News
2022 business calendar
How to do
Home THE WORLD today
Christmas Lottery Prize List
Check Christmas Lottery 2021
Second prize Christmas Lottery 2021
Gordo Loteria Christmas 2021
Check Child's Lottery
Burnley - Everton
Manchester City - Leicester City
Norwich City - Arsenal
Tottenham Hotspur - Crystal Palace
West Ham United - Southampton