Uncle Sain

Uncle Sain is the character of a very widespread legend throughout the Region of Murcia. He was a terrible guy, characterized as a scare of children, with whom they intimidated the little ones into going to sleep.

Myth/Legend
The myth of "Uncle Saín" relates that he was a real character. And that until a few years ago he was seen stuffed under a low, greasy black hat made of threadbare felt. Those who claimed to have seen his face claimed that he had a grim look. It was rumored that he lived in a shack (hut), in the heart of the Sierra de la Almenara, south of Cotes. And when he went down to the plains of the Alporchones, at all times he was distant and lonely, absorbed in ancestral thoughts. He never had a sharecropper, as was the custom in the place. He always used shortcuts and twists in his escapades. He was also known neither woman nor man. The children were told that Uncle Saín used to take them away to remove the blood or fat from the body (the saín is the fat of the animals) and throw them into the cistern, if they are there, when it was time to go to bed, they began be lazy. On nights of rain and blizzard, he was present at the slightest noise. The darkness of the children's nights was permeated by the obsessive shadow of Uncle Sain. The murmur of the wind and the howling of the dogs, repeated from mountain to mountain by the echo, carried the bloody smell to the child's imagination, in the long winter nights. Some ventured to think that there was something between Uncle Saín and a certain event that took place, back in the war years, in the vicinity of Los Alporchones, between a couple of police and an 'alijero' who smuggled goods from the coastline to the Guadalentín plain, bypassing the guard posts, through the mountains.