A New Order?

This chapter describes how organilleros , in spite of all the nuisance that they caused, played a key role in the formation of a middle-class lifestyle in Madrid. Organilleros represented everything that the rising middle classes rejected, such as coarseness and lack of refinement. The middle classes used organilleros as an Other against which to define themselves. Parallel to the legal persecution of organilleros in the 1890s, the press circulated news of crimes and murders allegedly committed by organilleros . There was a common narrative structure in all these news, namely, one in which an organillero killed his partner in a fit of jealousy. The media accused organilleros of misappropriating the centuries-long honor code that was endorsed in the 1870 Penal Code and that provided legitimacy for males to use violence against their wives to restore honor damaged through adultery.

Genealogy · Honor · Computer Science · Decadence, Literature, and Society · History