On Mount Mascarat, the gateway between Altea and Calpe, north of Costa Blanca, local tales tell of a dreaded bandit whose mask is said to have given the mountain its name.
However, some historians argue that “Mascarat” actually derives from maka-as, an ancient Iberian term meaning “cut stone.”
According to the legend, whenever this outlaw appeared, he vanished just as quickly. Soon after, the body of a man, unrecognisable due to leprosy, would be found on the mountain where the bandit operated. Some believed this man was the elusive “El Mascarat,” once thought to be a young man who had mysteriously disappeared from a nearby village.
The most daring version of the story claims that the dead man was none other than Judas Iscariot himself, the infamous traitor of the Bible. This oldest account ties the legend to Judas’s years of wandering after his betrayal.
According to local belief, it was Judas who sought refuge on the mountain, long before it was known as Mascarat.
Fleeing from his fate, Judas supposedly rested on a stone at the mountain’s ravine, vowing to remain there until his final day. Centuries later, the body found there bore all the signs of being the masked thief known as El Mascarat.
