Abuse of Power for Personal Enrichment in 'Tyrant Banderas' Anonymous College

Dictatorships — real and fantastical — are run with a penchant for corruption over legality in order to achieve personal gain for the members of their administration. The fictitious dictatorship of President Don Santos Banderas in Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s Tyrant Banderas is not immune to this inherent corruption. Banderas and the people who work with and under him are all motivated by the promise of personal enrichment and, in turn, do not act in the best interest of the republic.

President Don Santos Banderas unethically uses bribery as a political force to weaken the revolutionaries that threaten his power. Banderas recognizes the threat of a revolution backed by logic when he states that “there are men of learning among the revolutionaries, whose brains should be ticking on behalf of the fatherland” (Valle-Inclán, 16). To neutralize this threat, he relies on the corrupt concept of “silver bullets” to separate the intelligent population from the uneducated, lower classes. A silver bullet — bribery — is just as powerful in eliminating Banderas’ opposition as a literal bullet. With it, he offers the intellectuals elite political positions back in the country of Spain; he quite literally removes them from the revolution. Without...