Crime and Punishment in coplas of cante flamenco

Abstract

The XXI century, marked by numerous achievements in various fields, became the time of systematic arrangement of not only cante flamenco, but the law enforcement agencies and procedures in Spain as well. These phenomena, which at first glance have no common ground, appear to be inextricably entwined, since in the folklore of Southern Spain are often mentioned the committed crimes and the imposed punishments. The object of this research is the coplas of cante flamencto that contain information about crimes against ethnic groups, prison conditions, family visits procedure, death penalty, correctional labor, physical punishment and other aspects of being in the penitentiary institutions of that time and interaction with the judicial and legal system. The subject of this research is the law enforcement and penitentiary practices in Spain of the XIX centuries. The texts of cante flamenco have not been translated into the Russian language; only some of them drew the attention of domestic researchers, which defines the relevance of conducting interdisciplinary research dedicated to the historical records on the judiciary, prisons and law enforcement practice in Spain of the XIX century, which were contained in coplas of cante flamenco. The goal of this article lies in determination of peculiarities of delivering information related to crimes and punishments in coplas of cante flamencto, and its correspondence to the historical realities of that time. The research is based on the cante flamento colletcions of A. Machado-Alvarez and M. Balmaceda published in 1881. It is established that the lyrics of flamenco songs accurately reflect the difficulties and flaws in various aspects of functionality of the judicial and legal system and penitentiary institutions during their integration into the state system.