Nobody knows for sure if Libertalia (also known as Libertatia) ever really existed. It's only referenced in a single source (“A General History of the Pyrates” by Captain Johnson), some of the dates given don't match up, and the source is not usually considered all that reliable in the first place. All we can say is that it might have existed, but what an interesting story if it really did.

According to the story, Libertalia was a pirate republic, dedicated to the principle that “ every Man was born free, and had as much Right to what would support him, as to the Air he respired... that the vast Difference betwixt Man and Man, the one wallowing in Luxury, and the other in the most pinching Necessity, was owing only to Avarice and Ambition on the one Hand, and a pusillanimous Subjection on the other.”

The pirates of Libertalia, if they really existed, governed themselves according to democratic principles. They sailed and fought beneath a white flag instead of the usual pirate Jolly Rogers symbol, and their main target was slave ships. When they managed to capture a slave ship, they freed all the slaves, and invited them to join in the pirate republic. They also seized anything else on the ship for their own use.

Perhaps what is interesting about Libertalia is not whether it really existed or not, but the mere fact that people imagined it. In an era in which inequality of every kind went virtually unchallenged, democracy was a mere theory, and slavery was everywhere, there were already people dreaming about a different kind of world. The pirates of Libertalia may or may not have really existed- but if they didn't, then they should have. In the final analysis, Libertalia is a myth- not in the sense of a false story, but of a truth that transcends mere fact because its reality is one of aspiration.