mythical beasts of iberia

Well, you've been pretty darn quiet.

I guess we have.

Let's address the 1000lb Yeti in the room *insert self-deprecating joke here*. Those who follow what we do might have noticed that the pace has slowed down somewhat, and by "slowed down somewhat" we mean that the pace currently resembles a Sloth sleeping off a Sunday roast, complete with pudding and seconds, snuggled under its favourite blanket, getting lightly toasted in front of an open fire, having its hair stroked, and being soothingly read ASMR affirmations by its favourite Youtuber.

To be frank, Autumn and Winter kicked our butts, completely and utterly. The Mythical Beasts of Iberia map was due to launch way back in October, and as a textbook over-sharer, I'd love to tell you about all the challenging real-life things that have come along to smash any of our intentions or plans over the last 5 months. But I won't, it's not the place.

"Get on with it!"

Alright, Iberia... Let's go!

What an absolute pleasure it was to research the Iberian Peninsula. The most common myths I came across were of the goblin and brownie type (as a UK audience may know them). There is a beautifully bizarre variety of boogeymen lifted straight from Hieronymus Bosch paintings, and a mass of enchanted ladies, which are just as perplexing as any Boggle. We get some classic Greek mythology, as well as a solid mix of all the big hitters - Dragons, Unicorns, Vampires, Elementals, Trolls and Devils. As well as lesser found Hydras, Harpies, Tarasques, good lordy it's got it all!

As usual, a massive thank you to everyone who picked up a map, you helped us get through this big gap, and you absolutely rock. We're hoping to have a bit more variety to share with you this coming year.

If you would like to support the project please pick up a copy of the new Iberian Peninsula map (or any of our other maps), share us on social media, tell a mate etc. We can't do this without your help, and we appreciate you massively.

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Update- I’m working on book proposals at the moment, so I’ve kept some stories offline to save them for the books (and to stop anyone pinching all the hard work before they’re published!). If you’d like to know when the books are ready, just pop your name on the mailing list.

In the meantime, here are a few of my favourite beasties and legends -

Comte Estruch

OG Estruch, possibly Europe's oldest vampire myth. The Tale tells of a 12th century noble sent to Llers to be generally rotten to pagans and witches. One of said witches had the good (or potentially terrible) idea to curse him before she was burnt at the stake.

I'm generally against including anything witchy, as generally, you can translate witch to mean any woman who didn't follow whatever societal expectations were placed on them at that particular point in history. This usually meant having any degree of individualism or having the audacity to be educated or smart, for which they usually were ostracised, tortured and ultimately killed. But throwing out a curse of eternal unrest at the moment of execution is pretty much cackling witch 101, so let's roll with it.

Anyway, the witches curse is successful and Comte Estruch is now an undead, demonic, pagan-hating, heaven-denied, son of a gun. He rises from the grave at night to do exactly what we have come to expect vampires to do: suck blood, bed maidens, sow terror and just generally be a right pain in the bum for the local community. If he wasn't the original, you'd call him a cliche, but this is the blueprint for the vampire format that has held for a century.

Estruch finally meets his end by "a nun with magic and spiritual gifts," (let's not even get into that oxymoron) she exorcises him and it's all good again. Yay!

Galo De Barcelos

I can smell the peri-peri chicken in the air, and hear the Buena Vista Social Club classics being cranked out. UK readers will have seen the Galo De Barcelos adorning the walls of any Nandos they have graced, like a cave-painted idol to the lords of spicy feasting. Potentially readers in other countries have entered and potentially worshipped at Barcelo's shrine too. Who knows.

Anyway, for those not versed in Nandos lore, the myth is as follows.

A traveller from Galicia was passing through Barcelos and was falsely accused of nicking off with some silver. He was tried and sentenced to hang, which sounds a bit heavy-handed, mainly because it was.

The condemned man asked to be taken to see the judge who condemned him. And, in what sounds like an unlikely twist in the judicial protocol, they indeed took him to the judge's house. The judge was sitting, about to tuck into a bit of roast rooster.

Do people eat roosters? can you eat roosters?

*googles*

Yes, apparently you can eat rooster, so why don't we? Let's not get into food ethics, good lord.

Anyway, your man turns to the judge and says something along the lines of "I'm as surely innocent as that rooster will surely crow when you hang me." This put the judge right off his dinner - and presumably off tidying up after dinner - as sure enough the next day when they hang the convict, up pops Old Crispy and crows.

They rush to the hanged man and found him still alive thanks to some shoddy knotwork. The man was freed, and that's how we got spicy chicken.

Herensuge

A Hydra! Outside of Greece! It was really "cool" to find this one - Hydras have been a pretty rare find when researching for the maps, and I was happy to get to draw another. Herensuge has as many varied tales as he has heads, and screw it, I've got time today so let's look at a couple of them:

The first involves a magic stick. Like sad old men in sports cars, some of us would look pretty tragic carrying around Excalibur. For the gentleman entitled to a free bus pass, a magic stick might be the way to go; humble, earthly, elemental, unassuming, but still dope, just like you. Conversely to my previous witterings, the guy who gets the magic stick in this story is a young gun (goddamn kids, they get all the cool stuff). For some reason, he's carrying a cake around. When he's stopped by an old lady who asks for a slice, he gives her the whole cake - what a nice young fellow. Seeing as he's such a nice lad, she gives him a magic stick that can kill in a single blow. I've wondered if this is just any stick over a certain size used "right", presumably, you didn't have to swing it hard or something. Anyway, "magic" stick equipped, he becomes a shepherd and beast killer at a palace level. One day, a beast begs for its life and offers up the location of a palace hidden in the woods where he will gain great wealth. When he arrives at the woodland palace, he sees people drawing lots on who will be sacrificed to Herensuge. The king loses, but the nice lad accompanies him and administers several bonks on various heads with a magic stick killing Herensuge. The king is stoked, and the protagonist marries the princess; it's a classic nice lad done good story.

The second features a knight making penance for killing his parents (no idea why he did it, no idea why he thinks mashing a dragon up will fix it). He ventures off to rescue a woman who is to be sacrificed to a Herensuge. But pretty quickly, he realises he has massively stuffed this up, and it might not be as easy as he had made it out to be in the pub last night. Out of options and coming up short on bravado, the knight assesses his options. Realising they comprise of dying or peeing his pants then dying, he pulls out a hail Mary, and falls to his knees praying to St Michael. St Michael sticks his head in to see what's going on, notices Herensuge, and is also of the opinion of "no thanks, I don't want none of that," so asks God to kind of supervise the entire fiasco. In a very rare instance of having to escalate beast killing to the very highest level of management, God does actually show up. Feeling buoyed up by having his super big mate as backup, St Michael decapitates the Herensuge. Presumably, several times. Sounds tiring.

There are more stories out there, some a bit more fairytale with the Hernesuge being an enchanted prince or alike. If you like dragon stories, have a little google it will turn up some variations.

Homem Do Chapéu De Ferro

He was said to be one of the torturers of Jesus on the run-up to the Passion. So we know that we have the raw goods of something genuinely horrid here and, as Jesus curses him, all that horridness comes to fruition. The information regarding the transformation is kind of fragmented/lost so we'll skip along to the end product.

Homem Do Chapéu De Ferro appears at midnight near roadsides, olive trees, fig-trees, or fountains. He wanders the dark areas for 3 nights, but don't worry he's got some lovely mates for company - a snarling black pig, a large stag "whose armour touches the dome of the towers", or a rooster "black as the night of thunder". I think he gets one sidekick per night for the 3 days he's hanging out. They are said to be the Devil taking on different guises. Just in case his demonic gang isn't sufficient, he can also cause storms. He loves revenge and goes about robbing and killing anyone he believes wronged him. He is a giant figure with an iron hat buried into his head and his mouth is a ragged slit that belches fire - lovely.

La Cuca Fera

I loved this one, it's the story of a beloved dragon and in quite the narrative twist for dragon lore, it culminates in a demon and dragon dance party. Fun!

In the mountains of Begues, the Cuca Fera was born, with the usual terrifying appearance of a dragon. Well kind of - he is most commonly depicted in a similar way to the Tarasque of France, with a shell on his back and a long crocodilian head. The Cuca Fera lived a quiet life in the mountains watching life roll by - fields being tended, harvests being brought in, the seasons slowly blended from one to the other - and he started to feel a bit lonely. Awwww.

One night, he was awoken by the sound of screaming. The Baron's daughter had been kidnapped by an arrogant knight who - shirking any chivalric codes, basic law, or the concept of consent - had abducted the Baron's daughter, Rosaclara. Good old Cuca Fera got straight in there and gave the knight his best scary dragon impression. It worked; the knight wanted none of it and bolted. It might have worked a bit too well as Rosaclara was pretty convinced by the performance too. The Cuca Fera reassured her he wasn't really about that #dragonlife, and took her back to her dad's castle. Overjoyed with the return of his daughter, the Baron declared the Cuca Fera, "the guardian of the village of Begues." Everyone is happy, and we learn the patronising lesson that even ugly things can be sweet and probably shouldn't be hit with a halberd. They all eat cake, it's all lovely.

Enter stage right, an envious demon. Jealous of the love shared between the townsfolk and La Cuca Fera, he devises a plan to lead La Cuca Fera out of town and trap him in a cavern. For the record, trying to make friends by trapping their other mates in a cavern, ravine or pit rarely endears you to people.

It took La Cuca Fera a long time to escape and, when he did, he ran straight back to the town. He was thrilled to see the villagers and they were stoked to see him back, the whole town, young and old came out to have a massive celebration. Shocked, the demon appeared in the village and in a massive act of growth says something like, "I was wrong, I can see how much you love the Cuca Fera despite his fierce appearance. Please forgive me, I want to change, please may I join your party?".

They all party, and some say the demon's heart grew 2 sizes that day.

Ojáncanu

Giant, one-eyed, hairy, 10-fingered, embodiment of cruelty and brutality. If they had received a private school education, they may have made a passable politician; they didn't, so will likely have to settle for a career in media. Ojáncanu enjoyed smashing up huts, blocking rivers, wrecking up farms and forests, and just generally being rotten. The best shot you have at defeating an Ojáncanu is to pluck the single grey hair in its massive fiery red beard. Fair play to the Ojáncanu for carrying all that rage and stress and only developing one grey hair.

Another notable thing about the Ojáncanu is its birthing cycle. So, how do we navigate the treacherous waters of cyclops mating habits without making an obvious and terrible "one-eyed monster" joke? Or do we just lean into it? I guess it doesn't matter as Ojáncanu doesn't go about things in such a predictable way, nope. When an Ojáncanu dies, the others drag the remains beneath a Yew or Oak tree and, after 9 months of getting rather stinky in the Spanish sun, worms appear. Now is the female Ojáncana's time to shine; she feeds the worms her milk, and three years later they will turn into Ojáncanu. And that, boys and girls, is where baby Ojáncanu come from. Precious.

Roblón

Certainly not your Tolkien-esque Ent. There is no earthly wisdom to be found here, no peaceful giant, just destruction and death. Roblón started as an average bit of an oak tree with a hole in its trunk big enough for, let's say, a small girl seeking shelter from a storm to crawl into. Ultimately in the same way that a room full of monkeys with typewriters will eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare, eventually along comes a girl seeking shelter and climbs in the hollow. The girl's warmth and breath from within it stirred life in the tree which then rather ungratefully proceeded to crush her. Absorbing the squished girl into its fibres, it became sentient and began to outgrow/out-compete any plant life in the area. When Roblón had maxed out his gains, it uprooted itself and went entirely tree-hulk around the locale. His reign of terror continued until he was spotted sleeping, and people handily remembered a key fact - wood is flammable.

Trasgo

Going by many different names regionally, he is a small gnome/goblin-type creature. Described as having dark skin, wearing a red pointy hat, a long black and grey cloak, having a hole in his left hand, and walking with a limp. Sometimes he is also given animal features such as a tail, horns, or sheep ears. So there are a lot of fun ways to draw this guy.

He plays out like pretty much any house-dwelling Brownie; loves playing pranks, if you treat him good he will clean the house for you through the night, treat him poorly and he's gonna trash the place. They are hard to get rid of when they adopt you, even following you to new homes. To be rid of a Trasgo, you will need to present it with an impossible task. Trasgo are prideful and a bit dim, so employing any tradie tricks like sending it to the shop for "tartan paint" or a "long-weight" usually does the trick. More traditional options are fetching water from the sea in a basket, whitening a black sheep, or picking up millet with its left hand, which it can't do due to the hole in its left hand. That last one seems harsh and would likely lead to a long conversation with HR - and rightly so.

Also featured on the map:

Ayalga and Cuélebre

Balborinho

Basajarau

Bú

ButoniDocejo

Encantada

Geryon

Galhardo

Lagarto De Jaen

L Dragón De Bronchales

Los Mulachinis Del Cielu

Malismo

Maria Da Manta

Mono Careto

Morgos

Oricuerno

Paparrasolla

Peeira

Quarantamaula

Tágides

Tinyosa

Velha Da Égua Branca

Xacia