Comte Estruch

Also Known As: also Comte Estruc, Conde Estruch, Estruga; given the first names Arnald, Guifred or Guillem in different retellings; the vampire count of Llers, a character from Salvador Sáinz’s 1991 novel *Estruch*
Region/Culture: Southern Europe
Mythos: Catalan Mythology, Literary Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Undead/Cursed Beings
Mythical Attributes: The count dies old and rises young, drinks the blood of the people around Llers and fathers monstrous children that do not survive their own birth.
Role in Mythos: He is the vampire count of the castle of Llers in the Alt Empordà, a figure created in a Catalan novel of 1991 and widely retold since as a legend of the twelfth century.
Relation to Humans: He feeds on the villagers and seduces their daughters, and the region lives in fear of him until an old nun, or in another telling a Jewish hermit, finds where he lies and ends him. No medieval record names him, and historians of the period treat him as fiction.

On the eighth of February 1939, the village of Llers ceased to exist. Retreating Republican troops set off the munitions they had stacked in the parish church, and the blast flattened the houses and broke what was left of the castle on the rise above them. People came back to rubble and the smell of burnt powder. Half a century later, those ruins were given a tenant. A count, the story now goes, had lain under that hill since the year 1173, and he had not lain quietly.

The tale is told like this. In the twelfth century the young king Alfons II of Aragon sends an elderly nobleman north to the Alt Empordà, to the castle of Llers, with orders to stamp out witchcraft and the old pagan habits of the district. The count is a hard man and has not lived a Christian life. He dies at the castle in 1173, violently. Some retellings have him poisoned by one of his own soldiers; others say a witch he had persecuted laid a curse on him as he went. Either way he goes into the ground unshriven, and the ground does not hold him.

He comes back young. That is the detail every version keeps. The servants who buried a white-haired old man begin to meet a handsome stranger in the corridors after dark, moving through the cold rooms with the easy step of someone who owns them. Out in the fields, animals are found in the morning with the blood gone from them. Then it is people. The count goes down among the farms at night, drinks where he likes, and pays court to the girls of the district, who find him hard to refuse. Nine months later each of them is brought to bed of something misshapen that is dead before it can cry.

Nobody in the story fights him with an army. In one ending, an old nun works out where he sleeps, goes there alone, and destroys him in his coffin. In another, the work is done by a Jewish hermit who knows the rites of the Kabbalah and uses them to bind the count for good. Later tellers have added a stake through the heart, which was perhaps inevitable. After that the castle is only a castle again.

He has no settled first name. He is Arnald in some accounts, Guifred in others, Guillem in a few, and the surname shifts between Estruc, Estruch and Estruga. That looseness would be normal for an old oral legend. It is also what happens when a story spreads fast, by copying.

Here is the plain fact. Comte Estruch first appears in print in *Estruch*, a novel that Salvador Sáinz published himself in Reus in 1991. Sáinz, born in Reus in 1950, is an actor, director and writer with a long love of horror cinema, and he has said that he drew the count from a legend of the twelfth century that he had recovered. He has never shown where. Other people in the story are real enough: Alfons II reigned, and his tutor Guillem de Torroja can be found in the charters of the time. The count cannot. No document of the period mentions him, no collection of Catalan folklore made before the novel has been shown to include him, and historians who have gone looking have come back saying there is no trace of the man at all.

The castle, at least, is genuine. A fortress stood at Llers by the late eleventh century, on the line between the counties of Besalú and Empúries. A lord called Arnau de Llers witnesses agreements in 1090. The Rocabertí family took it in the thirteenth century and strengthened it in 1276, and French troops had to fight for it in 1285. What survives is a stump of round tower with walls two metres thick. The village had its own dark reputation long before any vampire, too: Llers was known across the Empordà as a town of witches, and in 1924 the poet Carles Fages de Climent published *Les bruixes de Llers*, a book of verse on the subject with drawings by the young Salvador Dalí. A vampire count needed a home, and this one was already furnished.

The story travelled quickly once it was loose. By the 2010s Catalan newspapers and radio were introducing Estruch as the first vampire in Europe, older than any Balkan rival by centuries, and travel pieces sent readers up to the ruins at dusk. Sáinz returned to his creation with a book of short stories in 2019. The claim to be the oldest vampire tale on the continent rests on the date inside the story, not on the date of the story.

Read as what he is, the count is a neat piece of work. His powers follow from the manner of his death: a man who died outside the Church gets back the youth he had lost, with a charm that opens doors and a thirst that empties the byres. He fathers children, which most vampires cannot, but they are born dead, so he leaves nothing behind him. His limits are just as tidy. He is tied to Llers and to the place where his body lies. He can be found by daylight. And for all his rank and his soldiers, what undoes him is the patience of one old woman of faith, or one learned outsider, the two kinds of person a persecuting count would have noticed least.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Comte Estruch?

Comte Estruch is the vampire count of the castle of Llers in the Alt Empordà, Catalonia. In the story he is an old nobleman sent by King Alfons II of Aragon to fight witchcraft, who dies in 1173 and returns from the grave as a young blood-drinker. He first appears in the 1991 novel *Estruch* by Salvador Sáinz.

Is Comte Estruch a real medieval legend?

No evidence shows that Comte Estruch is a medieval legend. The count first appears in a novel that Salvador Sáinz published himself in Reus in 1991, and Sáinz has never shown the twelfth-century source he said he used. No document of the period names the count, and historians have found no trace of him.

Was Comte Estruch the first vampire in Europe?

Comte Estruch is often called the first vampire in Europe because his story is set in 1173. That date belongs to the plot, not to the tale itself, which cannot be traced earlier than 1991. The claim spread through Catalan newspapers and radio in the 2010s.

How was Comte Estruch defeated?

The tellings give two endings for Comte Estruch. In one, an old nun finds the place where he rests and destroys him there. In the other, a Jewish hermit binds him with rites from the Kabbalah, and later retellings add a stake through the heart.

Where is the castle of Comte Estruch?

The castle of Comte Estruch is the castle of Llers, in the Alt Empordà in northern Catalonia. It is a real fortress, on record by the late eleventh century and strengthened by the Rocabertí family in 1276. It was wrecked on 8 February 1939, when retreating Republican troops blew up munitions stored in the village church.