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In 1799, the Spanish painter Francisco Goya finished a small, unsettling work called Que viene el Coco — “Here comes the Coco” — showing a hooded figure looming over frightened children while their mother looks away. The painting is one of the earliest documented visual records of El Coco, a bogeyman figure Spanish and Portuguese parents had already been invoking in lullabies for generations. Eighty years later, a real man convicted of killing six women and girls near Vitoria was executed — and Spanish grandmothers started using his name the same way they'd always used El Coco's.
What the historical record actually says
El Coco (also called El Cuco or, in much of Latin America, El Cucuy) is documented as a folkloric bogeyman figure across Spain, Portugal, and Galicia, used specifically as a threat to get children to go to sleep. Goya's 1799 painting is the most-cited early visual documentation of the figure, and Spanish lullabies warning that “el coco” will come for children who don't sleep are recorded well before that — the character functions less like a single monster with an origin story and more like a cultural tool, a name parents reached for across centuries to enforce bedtime.
Separately, and independently documented, is the case of Juan Díaz de Garayo, born in 1821 near Vitoria in the Basque province of Álava. Historical and court records establish that Garayo strangled at least five women and a 13-year-old girl across two periods, 1870–1874 and 1878–1879, attacking several more who survived. He was known by the epithet “Sacamantecas” — roughly “the fat extractor” in Spanish, a name tied to a rumor that he killed for the fat of his victims, sold at the time as a folk remedy. Garayo was tried, convicted, and executed by garrote in 1881. Contemporary Spanish crime historians and case databases treat him as one of Spain's earliest documented serial killers, predating the more internationally famous Jack the Ripper case in London by several years.
The legend as it's told today
This is where the two threads meet, and it's important to keep them separate. El Coco is folklore — an invented, faceless boogeyman used across the Spanish-speaking world with no basis in any single individual. Garayo is documented history — a real, named, convicted criminal with a court record. What historical accounts describe is a folk process where Garayo's genuinely horrifying real crimes got absorbed into the existing Sacamantecas bogeyman tradition (a related but distinct folk-threat figure predating him), and in the generations after his execution, some grandmothers in the Basque region and beyond reportedly began invoking his name — and the broader Sacamantecas image — the same way they'd always invoked El Coco: as a threat to make children behave, eat their food, or come home before dark.
It's worth being precise here: El Coco itself is not a rebranding of Garayo. The El Coco/Cucuy lullaby tradition existed well before Garayo was born and continues independently across Latin America today, entirely disconnected from the Basque case. What connects them is a shared folk mechanism — real regional fear from an actual criminal getting folded into an existing bogeyman vocabulary — rather than one figure literally becoming the other.
What's actually verifiable
Here's the honest split. Verifiable: Goya's 1799 painting exists and is a real, catalogued work; the El Coco/Cucuy folklore tradition is documented across Spain, Portugal, and Latin America with no connection to any historical individual; Juan Díaz de Garayo is a real historical figure with a documented trial, conviction, and execution record, and his crimes (killing at least six women and girls) are matters of Spanish criminal history, not legend. Not verifiable, and treated with appropriate caution here: the specific claim that Basque or Spanish families used “Garayo” or “Sacamantecas” by name as a bedtime threat is reported in popular and journalistic folklore sources rather than in a rigorous ethnographic study we could independently confirm, so it's presented as a widely reported folk tradition rather than an established fact. This article does not sensationalize Garayo's crimes or his victims; the goal is to document how a real, documented atrocity intersected with an existing folk tradition, not to entertain with the details of his violence.
Cultural significance today
El Coco remains one of the most widespread bogeyman figures in the Spanish-speaking world, cited by folklorists as a close cousin to the broader Latin American Cucuy tradition and referenced in children's literature, film, and regional festivals from Spain to Mexico. The Garayo case, separately, is documented in Spanish criminology and true-crime scholarship as one of the country's foundational serial killer cases, studied for what it reveals about 19th-century policing and forensic limitations rather than treated as folklore in academic contexts. The overlap between the two — a real criminal's name absorbed into an existing bogeyman vocabulary — is a documented pattern in folklore studies more broadly, seen in other regions where genuine local crimes get folded into pre-existing scare-stories used on children.
FAQ
Is El Coco based on Juan Díaz de Garayo?
No. The El Coco/Cucuy folklore tradition predates Garayo by generations and exists independently across the Spanish-speaking world. What's reported is that Garayo's name and the related Sacamantecas nickname later got folded into the same folk-threat vocabulary in parts of Spain, not that he originated the figure.
Who was Juan Díaz de Garayo?
A Spanish serial killer, active 1870–1879 near Vitoria in the Basque province of Álava, convicted of killing at least five women and a 13-year-old girl. He was executed by garrote in 1881.
Why was Garayo called “Sacamantecas”?
The nickname, meaning roughly “the fat extractor,” referred to a period rumor that he killed for body fat, which was falsely believed at the time to have medicinal value.
Is El Coco the same as El Cucuy?
They're regional names for closely related folklore — El Coco/Cuco is more common in Spain and Portugal, while El Cucuy is the more common form across much of Latin America, but both function as a bogeyman used to encourage children to sleep or behave.
When was El Coco first documented?
Goya's 1799 painting Que viene el Coco is the most commonly cited early documentation, though the oral lullaby tradition is understood to predate that painting.
Is this article claiming Garayo was supernatural?
No. Garayo was a real, human criminal tried and executed under 19th-century Spanish law. Any connection to El Coco is a documented folk process of names blending, not a claim about his crimes being anything other than real, human violence.
Learn More
- Spanish and Latin American folklore collections
- Books on historical European serial killer cases
- Goya art history and biography books
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