The great illustrated book of tattooing from that brutalist Spain, the one that proudly and defiantly displayed daggers, skulls, and bleeding hearts.

Edited by Servando Rocha. There was a time, not long ago, when tattoos were reserved for a group made up of criminals, apaches, prisoners, legionnaires, prostitutes, anarchists, or sailors. Although it also became fashionable among European royalty or was showcased in circuses and freak shows. Its use, a secret code in the hands of outlaws, sparked fascination and interest among numerous anthropologists, criminologists, and doctors who, following the ideas of the Italian Cesare Lombroso – father of criminal anthropology – saw tattoos as a sign of atavism and a predisposition to madness, violence, and murder, and the tattooed as oddities and mysterious beings.

In Spain, since 1888 when Rafael Salillas, our "little Lombroso," displayed his collection of tattoos from native criminals, the tattooed, who were photographed and studied, sowed terror and confusion: waves of apaches with bodies covered in obscene drawings and calls for revenge arrived in cities like Madrid, Barcelona, or Bilbao, among others, while defending the most underworld bohemia. Later, militiamen and falangists hid – or directly tore off – those revealing marks (sickles and hammers, yokes and arrows on arms and chests) that could cost them their lives, and the legionnaires – a true tattooed subculture – filled their bodies with crosses, virgins, and the names of their beloved. Also quinquis, gang members, motorcyclists, and rockers were pioneers in showing those "talking scars," as police and military commanders called tattoos.

For a century, tattoos were "criminal" and marginal, until in 1989, the photographer and tattooed Alberto García-Alix opened the doors of the tattoo shop and studio El Martillo de Lucifer, where its unstoppable popularization began with Mao, the legendary tattoo artist who in the eighties tattooed the US Navy in Rota, as one of its great stars. What came next we already know: tattoos and that surprising "old school" style became mainstream, elevated to the status of art, and lost the aura of danger from the past.

Servando Rocha, editor of this unique work in our country, researched and rescued old medico-legal treatises, police files, and numerous photographs "lost" in time and practically never seen, to build a visual narrative of a century of "beautiful angels" and "tattooed barbarians," alongside spectacular criminological collections from France, Mexico, and Germany, making CRIMINAL the great illustrated book of tattooing from that brutalist Spain, the one that proudly and defiantly displayed daggers, skulls, and bleeding hearts.