First published in 1929, Tyrant Banderas is a critically-acclaimed novel by Spanish author and dramatists Ramon del Valle-Inclan. It was one of the most influential works in the Latin American genre of the "dictator novel", which consisted of numerous works written to criticize dictatorships and the role of dictators in Latin America following the decline of the Spanish empire. Tyrant Banderas specifically was cited as an influence on García Márquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch and Roa Bastos’s I, the Supreme.
del Valle-Inclan was known not only as one of the most influential figures of early 20th-century Spanish modernism in literature, but also as a radical anti-traditionalist when it came to Spanish theatre. He was a member of the Generation of 98, a group of Spanish intellectuals active during the Spanish-American War who opposed the Spanish government's conservative "Restoration Movement" after the loss of the colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam. By the time of Tyrant Banderas's publication, del Valle-Inclan's politics had strayed from traditional absolutism to anarchism.
Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, oppressive dictatorships sprung up all across Latin America. Although the dictatorship in the novel is never named, the novel references aspects of Mexican culture, such as the Day of the Dead. The renowned painter Diego Rivera said that "Valle-Inclan had the sensitivity to capture the essential quality of life in my unhappy, comic, and beautiful country, and his Tyrant Banderas remains one of the most moving books about Mexico." The dictator and the oppression described in the novel recall the regime of Porfirio Diaz, who ruled Mexico with an iron fist from 1876 to 1911.
Some criticized Tyrant Banderas and del Valle-Inclan's lack of realism, including Venezuelan author Rufino Blanco Fombona. However, the general acclaim he received for the novel and his plays earned him a statue constructed in his honor in Madrid. He is sometimes regarded as the Spanish equivalent of James Joyce.
