Garduña

The Garduña is a mythical secret criminal society said to have been founded in Spain in the late Middle Ages. It was said to have been a prison gang that grew into a more organized entity over time, involved with robbery, kidnapping, arson, and murder-for-hire. Its statutes were said to have been approved in Toledo in 1420 after being founded around 1417.

Spanish historians León Arsenal and Hipólito Sanchiz have traced all references to the Garduña back to the 19th-century book Misterios de la inquisición española y otras sociedades secretas de España by Víctor de Fereal (maybe a pseudonym for Madame de Suberwick) and Manuel de Cuendías, published in 1850. Arsenal and Sanchiz doubt the Garduña ever existed.

As a secret society, the Garduña is very attractive for conspiracism, according to the historian Sánchiz. It was supposedly active for over 400 years in Spain and, among other things, it supposedly carried out the dirty work of the Inquisition. In serious Spanish studies about bandolerismo (outlaws) and social disorders (very frequent in Andalusia in the 19th century) there is not a single mention of the Garduña.