Mano Negra affair

The Black Hand (Spanish: La Mano Negra) was a presumed secret, anarchist organization based in the Andalusian region of Spain and best known as the perpetrators of murders, arson, and crop fires in the early 1880s. The events associated with the Black Hand took place in 1882 and 1883 amidst class struggle in the Andalusian countryside, the spread of anarcho-communism distinct from collectivist anarchism, and differences between legalists and insurrectionists in the Federación de Trabajadores de la Región Española.

In June 1883, the Jerez court sentenced seven people and eight accomplices to 17 years and four months of prison. Two people were acquitted, but the prosecutor appealed the sentence to the Supreme Court, who ruled in April 1884 in favor of the death penalty for all but one accused. Nine sentences were commuted to jail time and seven were executed by garrote two months later in Jerez de la Frontera's Plaza del Mercado. Three days later, the judges were recognized by the Order of Isabella the Catholic. Afterwards, the FRTE's La Revista Social showed solidarity with workers but not with the condemned. The clandestine newspaper of Los Desheredados, an illegalist and anarcho-communist group that had split from the FTRE, lamented that the Jerez executions went uncontested.