While Money Heist/ Casa de Papel took a bit of a lib turn at the end, historically, bank robbery has often been a method of fundraising by people who don't believe in the legitimacy of the state. Anarquismo Expropiador or Expropriative Anarchism was a reasonably huge thing in Europe, mostly Spain. People who are all up into Money Heist love hearing about this shit as Behind the Scenes type show trivia!
One of the most well known Expropriators was a Spanish guy by the name of Lucio Urtubia who started off as a communist and was eventually swayed by the CNT, a Spanish Anarchist organization. After meeting Francisco Sabaté, one of the major resistance figures against Franco, while they were both hiding in France, Lucio became involved in bank robberies to raise funds for other resistance members back in Spain. Eventually Lucio felt the Bank Robberies were too dangerous for both the Anarchists involved and the workers in the Banks and said, what if we started forging shit? This led to a multi-decade career of forging passports, ID cards, travelers checks, etc. All while maintaining a full-time job as a Brick Layer.
At one point, he met with Che Guevera to try and convince him to back a forging operation of the US dollar in order to try and destabilize the States. Unfortunately him and Che didn't hit it off and he wasn't a fan of Castro, but nobody's perfect.
His ultimate and final forgery was the Citibank Traveler's Checks which became such a large operation that for a time the Traveler's Checks weren't being accepted and Citibank feared they were going to go out of business. When Lucio was finally caught the forged checks kept showing up! This cost Citibank money, and rather than pursue charges against Lucio, they were forced to negotiate a cash settlement with him in exchange for the printing plates and remaining checks!
There's a 2007 Documentary called Lucio, which is a great watch. https://archive.org/details/lucio_2007
A cool article on LibCom
Lucio, the good bandit: reflections of an anarchist - Marie Trigona
Jacobin's Obituary of Lucio after he passed in 2020
But, that's not all! Modern day Expropriators use computers!
