His is a most curious case which might interest readers who wonder at the long route "anarchism" and "anarchists" have taken from the days when Emma Goldman tried to prostitute herself so as to buy a gun and assassinate a strike breaker to nowadays when the most "criminal" action considered by those who bear the flag - is a chin wag over the rights and wrongs of a trespass action over a fence at a G8 meeting.

Surely "el Solitario" was representative of a bygone age.

To my knowledge (correct me if I'm wrong) only 3 states in Europe have produced armed crimes which were self-attributed to anarchists; Spain, Italy and Germany. Also to my knowledge all such cases included a media fuss amounting to trial by press and the deaths of armed police agents. "El Solitario" was certainly not the first person to declare himself an anarchist in court when charged with bank robbery or murder of a police agent. So did the Italian born Claudio Lavazza who is serving a sentance for the murder of a police woman (The first such woman to die in the modern state) during a Bank robbery in 1996. Indeed there was some confusion in the Lavazza case when the grouplet were also called "armed communist workers" but years later 12/7/05 a group called CCCCC were blamed for a "pipe bomb" in a "Lavazza" brand name coffee pot outside the Italian consulate in Barcelona. It was the same week ETA tried to bomb an Irish company building an electricty plant in the Basque and the UK saw its summer of Terror begin.

I remember everyone had good alibis, was resolute in rejecting violence and stopped speaking Italian for a week.  http://www.indymedia.ie/article/70832

But El Solitario as his nickname suggests, was not thought be a member of any grouplet engaged in "anti-system" action or the perverse promotion of kitchenware. His 30 bank robberies won him a notoriety and status as "Spain's most wanted bandit" because of their meticulous planning and silly disguises. Jaime Giménez Arbe was a fan of the fake moustache and plasticine nose which you can see in this compilation of CCTV images produced by the Spanish authorities for his "most wanted" Youtube vid.
 http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=i1wQQOu8LhA

As a quick look at the list of his robberies and the reporting of them will confirm had the audacity to hit twice in the same area within 48 hours.  http://atracaelsolitario.blogspot.com/

When he was finally arrested in Portugal on the 23rd of July 2007 in "operation Gloria" a joint concern of the Portuguese authorities with the Spanish "Guardia Civil" it emerged that he had been preparing to go to Brazil to retire with his girlfriend, which might remind readers of long past British bank robbers who somehow despite their fame or notoriety never claimed a political philosophy. We can see in the photo how he jovially took his arrest perhaps not aware how intensive the following media portrayal would be.

Neighbours, school contemporaries, family members of victims, workers in banks were all wheeled out to confirm that the man was violent and surly and all they had needed was vindication of their instincts that this man was in fact a properly "bad-un".

After his extradition to Spain to face charges in a Navarran court for murder of police agents, he issued an open letter in which he describes his trades (fitter and solderer) and insists that his only intention was the professional expropriation of financial institutes as a jolly good anarchist.

In his court hearings this last week, the mother of one of the murdered police agents attacked him and beat him around the head before being gently removed by the court officials. "Murderer!" she shouted whilst he yet again insisted "Madam, I did not shoot your son".

It would have all been done and dusted. Provincial bank clients ready to return to the more subtle robbery which excites not their indignation - that of their mortgage rates.

Except then he had declared himself many times to be an "anarchist" alledged that a Corsican terrorist had been with him in the car when the 2 Spanish police were shot and in his final speech before sentencing switched into fluent Arabic.

At which point the TV reported solemnly that he had in his final bid for aggrandisement and notoriety and egoism turned a judicial process into a political show. Yet most interestingly the Arabic part of his harangue has not been made available to the curious to either transcribe or translate.


Now kids remember this :: You rob banks you go to Jail.

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his wiki  http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Jim%C3%A9nez_Arbe
his open letter of May 2008 from the prison Zuera as archived on the Spanish language Anarchist site "A Las Barricades"
 http://www.alasbarricadas.org/noticias/?q=node/7605
compilation of all his supposed jobs
 http://atracaelsolitario.blogspot.com/
his youtube most wanted vid  http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=i1wQQOu8LhA