Although this defence was rejected at trial, Queen Isabella II commuted his death sentence to allow doctors to investigate the claim as an example of clinical lycanthropy.

Blanco has become part of Spanish folklore as the Werewolf of Allariz[1] and is also known as The Tallow Man, a nickname he earned for rendering his victims' fat to make high-quality soap.

Fernández was found dead after attempting to collect a debt of 600 real that Blanco owed to a supplier in Ponferrada for the purchase of merchandise.

He reappeared later in public with a false passport using the name Antonio Gómez, a native of Nogueira, Portugal; and lived in the small village of Rebordechao in the district of Vilar de Barrio for at least a year.

In 1852, a complaint was finally lodged in the city of Escalona, alleging that Blanco deceived women and children into travelling with him so that he could kill them and remove their fat, which he then sold.

On the contrary, he instead turns out to be a pervert, an accomplished criminal capable of anything, cool and collected and without goodness but [acts] with free will, freedom and knowledge.

[2] The court case had lasted seven months and the transcript covered more than two thousand pages which were bound in five volumes titled "Licantropia".

The prosecution appealed against the reduction and a new hearing was set for March 1854, which upheld the original verdict from the court in Allariz: death by garrote.

Phillips wrote to José de Castro y Orozco, the Spanish Minister of Justice, stating that Blanco was suffering from a monomania known as lycanthropy and was not responsible for his actions.

The Minister of Justice wrote to Queen Isabella II who personally commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment by Royal Order of 13 May 1854 and Blanco was transferred to a prison in Celanova.

[2][3] Although there is no documentary evidence for the identity of Mr. Phillips, it is believed that he was the French physician Joseph-Pierre Durand de Gros who had been exiled to Britain and who later returned to France using the pseudonym Dr.

[2] Durand de Gros was a significant part of the movement that led to the incorporation and assimilation of "Braidism" (viz., hypnotism à la James Braid; see [8]) in France and his works on the influence of the mind were later developed by Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

[citation needed] The Celanova prison and its records no longer exist but it was widely believed that Blanco died within months of arriving.