Spanish Comics: Historical and Cultural Perspectives 9781789209983

Citation preview

SPANISH COMICS

Spanish Comics Historical and Cultural Perspectives

Edited by Anne Magnussen

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published in 2021 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2021 Berghahn Books Originally published as two special issues of European Comic Art: Volume 11, issue 1 (2018) and Volume 11, issue 2 (2018). All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Magnussen, Anne, editor. Title: Spanish comics : historical and cultural perspectives / edited by Anne Magnussen. Description: First. | New York : Berghahn Books, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020034010 | ISBN 9781789209969 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789209976 (paperback) | ISBN 9781789209983 (epub) | ISBN 9781789209983 (mobi) Subjects: LCSH: Comic books, strips, etc.—Spain—History and criticism. Classification: LCC PN6775 .S63 2021 | DDC 741.5/0946—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034010 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78920-996-9 hardback ISBN 978-1-78920-997-6 paperback ISBN 978-1-78920-998-3 ebook

Contents List of Illustrations Introduction Spanish Comics Historical and Cultural Perspectives Anne Magnussen

vii 1

Chapter 1 Dissenting Voices? Controlling Children’s Comics under Franco Rhiannon McGlade

19

Chapter 2 Satirical Panels against Censorship A Battle That Raged during the Spanish Transition Gerardo Vilches

37

Chapter 3 Tintin in the Movida Madrileña Gender and Sexuality in the Punk Comic Book Zine Scene Louie Dean Valencia-García

58

Chapter 4 From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth Castelao in Galician Graphic Biography David Miranda-Barreiro

80

Chapter 5 The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics Remembering the Civil War and Francoism Juan Carlos Pérez García

101

vi

Contents

Chapter 6 ‘For He Bestirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’ Depicting the Medieval Reconquista in Modern Spanish Graphic Novels Iain A. MacInnes

125

Chapter 7 An interview with Paco Roca Esther Claudio

143

Chapter 8 ‘They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’ Intergenerational Memory and La casa Sarah D. Harris

163

Chapter 9 182 Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa (2015) as Architectural Elegy Benjamin Fraser Chapter 10 202 Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Spanish Graphic Novels Agatha Mohring Chapter 11 Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age Multimodal Extension in the Works of Aleix Saló Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes

221

Chapter 12 Historicising the Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain, 1965–1975 Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

243

Index

265

Illustrations 1.1. ‘Doña Urraca se encuentra un billete’ [Doña Urraca finds a note], Pulgarcito 125 (1949), 15.

27

1.2. ‘Doña Urraca’, Pulgarcito 1658 (1963), 16.

34

2.1. El Papus 31 (18 May 1974), cover.

46

2.2

Distribution of the administrative causes. Cases against satirical magazines (Archivo General de la Administración 1973–1977).

48

2.3. Final resolutions of the causes. Cases against satirical magazines (Archivo General de la Administración 1973–1977).

49

2.4

El Perich, Por Favor 72 (17 November 1975), 4.

50

2.5

García Lorente, ‘The Illustrated Se Lo Juro News’, El Papus 113 (27 March 1976), 8.

51

Por Favor 18 (25 October 1974), cover.

52

3.1. La liviandad del imperdible 1 (October 1977).

60

3.2. Kaka de luxe 1, pirate edition (1977, 1984). 

70

3.3. 96 Lágrimas 2 (c. 1981–1984).

74

3.4. 96 Lágrimas, unnumbered (c. 1981–1984). 

76

4.1. Castelao, ‘Ojo clínico’ [Clinical eye], Vida gallega 5 (May 1909), np.

83

4.2. Castelao, ‘Conto’ [Story], 175 debuxos, np.

84

2.6

viii

Illustrations

4.3. Paco Martín, Ulises S. Sarry and Xoán Balboa, Castelao: O home, Axóuxere supplement of La Región, 11 January 1975, np.

88

4.4. Isaac Díaz Pardo, Castelao (A Coruña: Ediciós do Castro, 1985).

90

4.5. Siro, Mazaira and Cubeiro, Castelao (A Coruña: Nova Galicia, 1987), 62

94

4.6. Inacio and Iván Suárez, Atila (Santiago de Compostela: Demo Editorial, 2015), 36–37.

98

5.1. Carlos Giménez, ‘Noche de Reyes’ (1977).

106

5.2. Antonio Hernández Palacios, Eloy: Río Manzanares (Vitoria: Ikusager, 1979), 50.

108

5.3. Francisco Gallardo Sarmiento and Miguel Gallardo, Un largo silencio (Alicante: De Ponent, 1997), cover, 30–31.110 5.4. Antonio Altarriba and Kim, El arte de volar (Alicante: De Ponent, 2009), 13.

115

5.5. Antonio Altarriba and Kim, El arte de volar (Alicante: De Ponent, 2009), 93.

116

5.6. Paco Roca, Los surcos del azar (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2013), 34–35.

118

5.7. Carlos Guijarro, Paseo de los canadienses (Alicante: De Ponent, 2015), 12, 110.

121

6.1. Antonio Hernández Palacios, El Cid (Rasquera: Ponent Mon, 2015), 124.

132

6.2. Jesús Cano de la Iglesia, 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa (Rasquera: Ponent Mon, 2016), 49.

134

6.3. Jesús Cano de la Iglesia, 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa (Rasquera: Ponent Mon, 2016), 63.

136

6.4. Antonio Hernández Palacios, El Cid (Rasquera: Ponent Mon, 2015), 164.

139

6.5. AntonioHernández Palacios, El Cid (Rasquera: Ponent Mon, 2015), 173.

140

7.1. Paco Roca, El invierno del dibujante (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2010), 95.

148

7.2. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 6.150



Illustrations ix

7.3. Paco Roca, El invierno del dibujante (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2010), 14.

151

7.4. Paco Roca, Los surcos del azar (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2013), 151.

151

7.5. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 116.152 7.6. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), cover. 

157

7.7. Miguel Gallardo and Paco Roca, Emotional World Tour (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2009), 60. 

159

8.1. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 4.170 8.2. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 76.

172

8.3. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 47.173 8.4. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 31.174 8.5. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 30.175 8.6. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 20.176 8.7. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 18–19.179 9.1. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 5.

188

9.2. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 65.

190

9.3. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 6.

191

9.4. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 7.

192

9.5. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 83.

195

9.6. Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015), 99.

199

10.1. Cristina Durán and Miguel Ágel Giner Bou, Una posibilidad entre mil (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2017), 23, 27.

206

10.2. ‘De Barcelona a Canarias’, Miguel Gallardo, María y yo (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2010).

211

10.3. Cristina Durán and Miguel Ágel Giner Bou, Una posibilidad entre mil (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2017), 73.213 10.4. ‘Tiempos muertos’, Miguel Gallardo, María y yo (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2010).

215

11.1. Aleix Saló, Fills dels 80, la generació bombolla (Barcelona: Ediciones Glénat, 2009), 14.

225

11.2. Aleix Saló, Fills dels 80 , la generació bombolla (Barcelona: Ediciones Glénat, 2009), 68.

229

x

Illustrations

11.3. Aleix Saló, Simiocracia (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, 2012), 114.

230

11.4. Frame fragments from the book trailer Españistán (2015) (6:25–6:28).

234

11.5. Frame fragments from the book trailer ‘Euronightmare’ (2014) (1:26–1:36).

237

12.1. Cuto: Boletín Español del Comic 3 (San Sebastián, 1968), cover.

257

12.2. Bang! información y estudios sobre la historieta (1971), 4.

260

12.3. Subscription form enclosed in Bang! issue 2 (November 1970).

262

Introduction

Spanish Comics Historical and Cultural Perspectives Anne Magnussen

It is probably impossible to pinpoint anything that is unique about Spanish comics.1 Since the beginning of modern comics history at the end of the 19th century, comics as a medium has been truly transnational, with comics artists and publishers interacting and inspiring each other across national borders. In the case of Spanish comics, a common language unites the Spanish and Latin Ameri­ can comics and markets, but interactions with European (mostly Italian and Franco-Belgian) comics, US comics and, more recently, Asian comics and manga have also been and are at work. This basic transnational characteristic invites us towards studies that move beyond the nation state and focus on comics, artists, publishers and readers as part of ‘multidirectional flows of peoples, ideas and

1 ‘Comic’ is used here as a general term (including comic strips, series, books, and graphic novels).

2

Anne Magnussen

goods’ across national borders rather than as phenomena defined by national origins.2 Following this transnational logic, Spanish comics are not unique in comparison with comics from other countries, but they do stand out because of the particular interrelation between the country’s national history and that of other parts of the world.3 This makes it worthwhile zooming in on Spanish comics, both to study them in their own right and to see them as a prism through which the comics field at large can be understood. This was the main reason behind the European Comic Art editors’ decision to publish two special issues about Spanish comics in 2018. These issues have now been turned into this anthology.4 Its 12 chapters show how their objects of analysis can be understood when taking into account regional, national, transnational or global processes. Spanish comics history involves the trends that characterize western comics history in general.5 These include adult caricature and satire from the beginning of the 20th century; the golden age of children’s comics especially in the 1950s and 1960s; the emer­ gence of new comics and comics genres specifically for an adult audience from the 1960s (including pornographic, intellectual and social protest comics); and, especially within the last 30 years, the graphic novel. Although these comics genres and trends have changed in visibility and popularity over time, today they are all present alongside each other, making for a comics field that is highly heterogenous and truly exciting. As part of the Spanish context, the above trends have been shaped by broader political, social and cultural changes in Spain, not least the political repression and conflicts during the 20th 2 Shelley Fisher Fishkin, ‘From the Editors’, Journal of Transnational American Studies 1, no. 1 (2009): 1–4 (1). An explicit example of a transnational focus in comics studies is Shane Denson, Christina Meyer and Daniel Stein, ‘Introducing Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives’, in Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives: Comics at the Crossroads, ed. Shane Denson, Christina Meyer and Daniel Stein (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 1–12. 3 In accordance with Doreen Massey’s definition of space as a product of inter­ relations, see Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage Publications, 2005), 9. 4 Volume 11, numbers 1 (spring 2018) and 2 (autumn 2018). This introduction is a thoroughly revised and rewritten version of the original introductions to the two special issues. Apart from minor corrections and updates, the chapters are identical with the journal articles. I want to thank my co-editors at European Comic Art, Ann Miller and Laurence Grove, for their invaluable participation in creating the two special issues as well as this book. 5 Antonio Martín, Historia del comic español: 1875–1939 [The history of Spanish comics: 1875–1939] (Madrid: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1978). According to Martín, Spanish comics history begins around the end of the nineteenth century, primar­ ily with illustrations and cartoons in newspapers.



Introduction 3

century that set Spain apart in Western Europe, i.e. the Civil War (1936–1939), the Franco dictatorship (1939–1975) and the succeed­ ing transition to democracy. This history not only influenced the comics during the 1930s to 1970s, but it has also to a very large extent shaped the development and characteristics of comics from the 1980s and onwards. Today Spanish comics evolve around the same topics as those that are current in other parts of the world – memory, documentary, social protest and activism among many others – while they are also shaped within the particular Spanish context. This will be apparent in the chapters in this anthology. At the same time, research into Spanish comics is part of trans­ national processes. Comics research is today largely international, which is apparent from publications and conferences, as well as in bibliographic references in academic work. However, language plays a key role, as English language comics research seems to dominate, while much of the research on Spanish comics is writ­ ten in Spanish. Therefore, it is important to make research in languages such as German, French, Arabic – and Spanish – vis­ ible on an international stage. Ironically, one way of doing this is through a publication such as this – in English. Some of the book’s chapters are written by Spanish scholars who have published pri­ marily in Spanish, and all the chapters draw on Spanish language research. I have furthermore strived to include references to schol­ arly texts (mostly in Spanish or in English) in this introduction, offering a sketch of the field with a specific focus on the academic literature published since 2000.6 In this way, the anthology high­ lights not only Spanish comics, but also comics scholarship about these comics. The 12 chapters in this anthology were, as mentioned, first pub­ lished as articles in the peer-reviewed journal European Comic Art, and they were the result of an open call for papers about Spanish Comics in 2017. The call resulted in 21 promising abstracts, and as any journal or book editor will know, getting from abstracts to the final chapters is the result of a long, complex and sometimes arbi­ trary route. It could therefore have proved something of a challenge to present them in a coherent manner in this introduction. As it turned out, the difficulty was not to figure out how the 12 studies relate to each other, but rather to choose from the many different ways in which they connect. 6 Due to the limited pages available, this introduction is in no way an exhaustive discussion of research into Spanish comics. With few exceptions, research in languages other than English and Spanish will not be included here.

4

Anne Magnussen

The presentation of the chapters more or less follows a conven­ tional chronological order with regards to the time periods and comics discussed in the chapters. Some of the chapters span a rel­ atively long historical period, but most of them are centered on one of the two historical periods that have attracted the most interest both in Spanish comics research at large and among the contribu­ tors to this volume, namely the mid-century repression and conflict (1940s–1970s) and contemporary comics (2000s–2010s). A chronological sketch of Spanish comics history nevertheless begins with a somewhat disconcerting statement, namely that de­ spite the fact that early Spanish comics, i.e. comics 1875–1939, are tremendously interesting, research into this era is rather limited. Admittedly, this anthology does not do much to remedy this situ­ ation, and Antonio Martín’s account from 1978 continues to be a standard reference for this period.7 That being said, several of the anthology’s chapters refer to the early period as part of the context of their analysis, and early comics history has attracted more at­ tention in recent years, both with a national and regional focus. 8 7 Martín, Historia del comic español. See also Antonio Martín, ‘La Historieta espa­ ñola de 1900 a 1951’ [Spanish comics history 1900–1951], in La Historieta española, 1857–2010: Historia, sociología y estética de la narrativa gráfica en España, [The Spanish comic, 1857–2010: History, sociology and aesthetics of graphic narrative in Spain], ed. Antonio Altarriba special issue, Arbor 187, extra no. 2 (2011), 63–128. Jesús Cuadrado has also contributed considerably to information about this period with his Diccionario de uso de la historieta española [Dictionary of the uses of the Spanish comic] (Madrid: Compañía Literaria, 1997). Note that tebeo, historieta and comic may all be translated into English as ‘comic’, even though they have different connotations in Spanish. 8 Manuel Barrero, ‘The Evolution of Children’s Comics in Spain’, International Journal of Comic Art 5, no. 2 (2003): 28–49; Manuel Barrero, ‘Orígenes de la historieta española, 1857–1906’ [The origins of Spanish comics, 1857–1906], in Altarriba, ed., La Historieta española, 15–42; Xulio Carballo Dopico, Os Pioneiros da banda deseñada galega (1971–1979) [The Pioneers of Galician Comics (1971– 1979)] (Vigo: Xerais, 2019); Jorge Catalá Carrasco, Vanguardia y humorismo gráfico en crisis: La guerra civil española (1936–1939) y la revolución cubana (1959–1961) [Avant-Garde and graphic humour in crisis: The Spanish Civil War and the Cuban Revolution] (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2015); Rhiannon McGlade, Catalan Cartoons: A Cultural and Political History (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016); Pedro Porcel and Vicente Sorní, Viñetas a la luna de Valencia: La historia del tebeo valenciano, 1965–2006 [Panels to the moon of Valencia: The history of Valencian comics] (Alicante: Edicions de Ponent, 2007); Joel C. Webb, ‘Drawing a Glorious Past, Picturing an Uncertain Future’, European History Quarterly 47, no. 2 (2017): 257–283. Some titles focus on the satirical press during a longer period of time: Enrique Bordería Ortiz, Francesc-Andreu Martínez Ga­ llego and Josep Lluís Gómez Mompart, eds., El Humor frente al poder: Prensa humorística, cultura política y poderes fácticos en España (1927–1987) [Humor up against power. The humor press, political culture and the powers that be in Spain (1927–1987)] (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2015); Luís Conde Martín, El Humor gráfico en España: La distorsión intencional [Graphic humour in Spain: Intentional distortion] (Madrid: Asociación de la Prensa de Madrid, 2005).



Introduction 5

Mid-century repression and conflict: Dictatorship, and political and social protest In opposition to the limited research into early Spanish comics, the following period, including the Francoist dictatorship (1939– 1975) and the political transition to democracy (1970s–early 1980s), has been – and continues to be – a main focus in Spanish comics scholarship. It is hardly a surprise, as the period represents major political and societal changes in Spanish society, coinciding with important international developments within the comics field. Spanish comics of the time were shaped by both. Severe censorship and a conscious use of children’s literature (including comics) for indoctrination of the regime’s National-­ Catholic, authoritarian ideology reigned during the Francoist dictatorship. Western Europe consisted at the time primarily of democratic nation states, which made the closed, Spanish dictator­ ship (along with Portugal) an exception. This makes it at times easy to overlook the fact that Spanish comics were also similar to foreign comics, and that especially comics from Europe, but US comics, too, were an important source of inspiration also during the dictatorship. As part of an international trend, Spanish comics for children experienced a golden age especially in the 1950s, which is a main focus in Rhiannon McGlade’s chapter, ‘Dissenting Voices? Con­ trolling Children’s Comics under Franco’. McGlade addresses the interaction between comics publishers, censorship authorities and children’s comics during this golden age. She draws attention to the comics themselves and to the ways in which the regime tried to control their content and thereby to force a specific idea about Spain onto the children. Efforts to control children’s literature were present in other European countries and the United States in this period, but the very real threat of control and punishment during a dictatorship set the Spanish comics market apart. In Spanish comics research – particularly in Spanish – chil­ dren’s adventure and humour comics constitute the topic of many studies, including a series of general introductions to the comics of the period.9 Other analyses have zoomed in on a particular comic, artist or genre, typically using it as a prism for a more general view 9 Viviane Alary, ‘The Spanish Tebeo’, European Comic Art 2, no. 2 (2009): 253–276; Antonio Altarriba, La España del tebeo: La historieta española de 1940 a 2000 [Comics Spain: Spanish comics from 1940 to 2000] (Madrid: Espasa, 2001); Ana Merino, El Cómic hispánico [Hispanic comics] (Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 2003), 97–145; Pedro Porcel, ‘La Historieta española de 1951–1970’, in Altarriba, ed., La Historieta española, 129–158.

6

Anne Magnussen

of comics and their context. This is the case with several studies of the adventure comics of that era, with the series El Capitán Trueno [Captain Thunder], El Guerrero del Antifaz [The Masked warrior] and Roberto Alcázar y Pedrín being among the most popular.10 Yet other studies particularly address comics for girls during the dictatorship.11 Studies of the period’s humour comics also often focus on a comics artist, character or series,12 and within the field of caricature and cartoons during the dictatorship, particularly the semi-satirical magazine La Codorniz has caught scholarly at­ tention.13 Closely related to the dictatorship is the aforementioned

10 Antonio Lara, ‘El Guerrero del Antifaz, repaso del cuaderno nº 26: “El crimen de Harúm” (1946)’ [The Masked Warrior: A reading of magazine no. 26: ‘The crime of Harúm’], in Historietas, comics y tebeos españoles, ed. Viviane Alary (Mirail: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2002), 164–173; Lucas E. Lorduy, ‘Roberto Alcázar y Pedrín como paradigma sociológico del período de la autarquía en España (1939–1959)’ [Roberto Alcázar y Pedrín as a sociological paradigm of the autarky period in Spain], CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic 7 (2016): 66–86; José Antonio Ortega Anguiano, El Capitán Trueno: El Gran Héroe del tebeo [Captain Thunder: The great comics hero] (Palma: Dolmen Editorial, 2012); Pedro Porcel, Tragados por el abismo: La historieta de aventuras en España [Swallowed by the abyss: adventure comics in Spain] (Alicante: Edicions de Ponent, 2010). 11 Rosario Jiménez Morales, ‘Pequeños defectos que debemos corregir: Apren­ diendo a ser mujer en la historieta sentimental de los años cincuenta y sesenta’ [Small defects that we should correct: Learning to become a woman in the senti­ mental comics of the fifties and sixties], in Altarriba, ed., La Historieta española, 159–168; María del Pilar Loranca de Castro, ‘“Mis Chicas” y su influencia en las niñas de posguerra’ [‘My girls’ and their influence on post-war girls], Historietas 3 (2013): 71–81. 12 Viviane Alary, ‘Hito de la historieta española: El caso de K-Hito en la serie “De cómo pasan el rato Currinche y Don Turulato”’ [Hito of the Spanish comic: The case of K-Hito in the series ‘How Currinche and Don Turulato spend the day’], in Alary, ed., Historietas, 142–163; Fernando Javier de la Cruz, Los Cómics de ­Francisco Ibáñez [The comics by Francisco Ibáñez] (Cuenca: Ediciones de la Uni­ versidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2008); Óscar Gual Boronat, ‘Qué Suerte más perra: Los oscuros años de Jaimito’ [What bad luck: Jaimito’s dark years], Historietas: Revista de estudios sobre la Historieta 3 (2013): 57–69; Jesús Jiménez Varea, ‘You Can Never Win: An Analysis of Comic Strips by the Spanish Cartoonist Peñarroya’, International Journal of Comic Art 5, no. 2 (2003): 50–65. 13 Manuel Barrero, ‘Martínez de León: Humor gráfico en la guerra civil y bajo el Franquismo’ [Martínez de León: Graphic humor in the Civil War and during the Francoist regime], Tebeosfera 2 (2008); José Antoio Llera, El Humor verbal y visual de La Codorniz [Verbal and visual humour in La Codorniz] (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2003); José Antonio Llera, ‘De la Palabra a la imagen: El chiste gráfico de Chumy Chúmez’ [From word to image: Chumy Chúmez’ graphic jokes], Tebeosfera 2 (2008); Cristina Peñamarín, ‘El Humor gráfico del Franquismo y la formación de un territorio translocal de identidad democrática’ [Graphic humor during Francoism and the formation of a translocal territory of democratic identity], CIC (Cuadernos de Información y Comunicación) 7 (2002): 351–380.



Introduction 7

question of censorship. It is hard to avoid in any study about comics of this period, but some titles have it as their main theme.14 Even though censorship and control were virulent during the dictatorship, not all children’s comics reproduced regime values one-to-one, and it is one of McGlade’s main points that some of the children’s comics tried to push censorship boundaries. There was nevertheless an enormous difference between the social criti­ cism of these comics and the very explicit political opposition to the regime that came with political satire and fanzines from the 1970s. While the conventional publishing houses undertook self-censor­ ship, the fanzines were published outside of the mainstream and contributed to shaping increasingly widespread protests, especially among young Spaniards, against the dictatorship. The political satire and fanzines were provocative and loud and represented a radical rupture with the children’s comics universe. Retrospec­ tively, they constitute one of the most important characteristics of 1970s Spanish comics. At the same time, this material was part of a broader rupture within western comics traditions, in which the new comics for a young and adult audience played a role in youth culture by introducing new themes, but also new aesthetics, genres and formats. Furthermore, they engendered a new group of Spanish comics artists that continued in the field throughout the 1970s and beyond.15 In this anthology, two chapters specifically analyze and discuss the development during the political transition, namely Gerardo Vilches’ ‘Satirical Panels against Censorship. A Battle That Raged during the Spanish Transition’ and Louie Dean Valencia-García’s ‘Tintin in the Movida Madrileña. Gender and Sexuality in the Punk 14 Ignacio Fernández Sarasola, ‘Viñetas truncadas: El control sobre las historietas durante el franquismo’ [Truncated panels: Control over the comic strips during Francoism], International Journal of Iberian Studies 30, no. 1 (2017): 41–57; Vicent Sanchis, Franco contra Flash Gordon: La censura franquista aplicada a les publicacions infantils i juvenils (1936–1977) [Franco against Flash Gordon: Franco’s censorship applied to publications for children and the youth] (Valencia: Tres i Quatre, 2009); Vicent Sanchis, Tebeos mutilados: La censura franquista contra Editorial Bruguera [Mutilated comics: Francoist censorship against Editorial Bru­ guera] (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2010). 15 A few examples of academic books about comics during the political transition are Antonio Altarriba, Los Tebeos de la Transición: Las historieta española en los setenta [Comics of the Transition: Spanish comics in the 1970s] (Cuenca: Fundación Antonio Pérez, 2008); Pablo Dopico, El Cómic underground español, 1970–1980 [The Spanish underground comics, 1970–1980] (Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 2005); Francesca Lladó Pol, Los Cómics de la Transición: El boom del cómic adulto 1975–1984 [Comics of the Transition: The boom of adult comics 1975–1984] (Barcelona: Ediciones Glénat, 2001); Francisco Segado Boj, Un País de chiste: El humor gráfico durante la Transición [A joke country: Graphic humor during the Transition] (Madrid: Ediciones Rialp, 2012).

8

Anne Magnussen

Comic Book Zine Scene’. Gerardo Vilches discusses the more ex­ plicitly political cartoons of the time and the ways in which the Francoist regime tried to delimit their circulation and impact through censorship. In his chapter, Louie Dean Valencia-García zooms in specifically on the underground fanzines of the period and studies how they offered Spanish young people new means of communication and cultural outlets. As mentioned above, the 1970s and early 1980s Spanish comics scene has become an important object of study. Some of these studies focus on specific publications or series,16 while others concentrate on a topic such as the representation of women in the magazines.17 The period of the political transition also saw the emergence of what would become the most popular comics genres of the 1980s: underground and línea clara comics. These genres have also become key topics for scholarly work, both in monographs and in a long series of scholarly articles.18 16 Alfonso Cortés González, ‘Historieta social y de actualidad: Martínez el Facha’ [Social and current comics: Martínez el Facha], in Las Dimensiones social y política del comic [The social and political dimensions of comics], ed. Ana Jorge Alonso, Rocío de la Maya Retamar and Alfonso Cortés González (Málaga: Centro de Edi­ ciones de la Diputación de Málaga, 2006), 53–70; María Iranzo, ‘Un Golpe de risa: La gracia de un golpe – Análisis del golpe de estado del 23 de febrero de 1981 por la revista El Papus’ [A joke of a military coup: The grace of a coup – Analysis of the coup of 23 February 1981 by the magazine El Papus], in La Risa periodística: Teoría, metodología e investigación en comunicación satírica [Journalistic laugh­ ter: Theory, methodology and research in satirical communication], ed. Enrique Bordería Ortiz, Francesc A. Martínez Gallego and Josep L. Gómez Mompart (Va­ lencia: Tirant lo Blanch, 2010), 183–213; Gerardo Vilches, ‘La Primera etapa de El Jueves: Un análisis de los primeros 26 números del semanario’ [The first stage of El Jueves: An analysis of the first 26 issues of the weekly], CuCo – ­Cuadernos de Cómic 2 (2014): 137–158. 17 Carla Garrido Zanón, ‘La Construcción de la imagen de la mujer en el humor gráfico del semanario Hermano Lobo (1972–1976)’, [The construction of the image of women in the graphic humor of the weekly Hermano Lobo], Revista de Comunicación de la SEECI 36 (2015): 20–30; Jessica Lluch Jiménez, ‘La Represent­ ación de la mujer en la prensa satírica: Por Favor (1974–1978)’ [The representation of women in the satirical press: Por Favor], Revista internacional de Historia de la Comunicación 3 (2014): 71–94. 18 Monographs: Dopico, El Cómic underground; Lladó Pol, Los Cómics de la Transición; Pedro Pérez del Solar, Imágenes del desencanto: Nueva historieta española 1980–1986 [Images of disenchantment: The new Spanish comic] (Madrid: La Casa de la Riqueza, 2013). Articles: Danielle Corrado, ‘Carlos Giménez y el pacto autobiográfico’ [Carlos Giménez and the autobiographical pact], in Alary, ed., Historietas, 174–194; Pablo Dopico, ‘Esputos de papel: La historieta “under­ ground” española’ [Spittle of Paper: The Spanish ‘underground’ comic], in Al­ tarriba, ed., La Historieta española, 169–181; Pablo Dopico, ‘Lo Femenino y el sexo en el underground español’ [Femininity and sex in Spanish underground comics], Historietas 2 (2012): 87–96; Marina Hertrampf, ‘Katalanischer Comic und movida barcelonesa: La noche de siempre von Montesol und Ramón de España’ [Catalan Comics and the Movida in Barcelona: ‘The well-known night’



Introduction 9

Historical Memory, the Nation, and the Regions The memory of the Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship has loomed large in Spanish society since the transition to democracy. However, it has taken different shapes, from the immediate re­ actions to the recent past during the political transition, through efforts to avoid it altogether and rather focusing on regional iden­ tities during the late 1980s and early 1990s, to the embracing from 2000 of historical memory and its consequences for the idea of the Spanish nation as a key cultural, political and legal topic. The comics field went through more or less the same phases, where the political and social criticism that defined a large part of the 1970s comics all but disappeared from the mid-1980s. Spanish comics of the late 1980s and the 1990s may rather be described according to broader European comics trends and only to a limited extent as engaging with Spanish society and culture. This is most visible in the choice of topics and themes, as most of these comics zoom in on the intimate sphere or engage in broader existential themes.19 After the early 1980s, Spain was not particularly visible in the comics. This assertion of European dominance should be modified on one point, though, as the 1980s and 1990s saw a strengthening in comics from the historical regions of Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia in terms of publication and topics. This re­ gional visibility had very much to do both with historical memory and with the nation. The historical regions and cultures had been harshly repressed during the Francoist dictatorship, and they were very active in the protests against the regime from the late 1960s and onwards, and as part of the newly minted democracy, many

by Montesol and Ramón de España], Zeitschrift für Katalanistik / Revista d’Estudis Catalans 25 (2012), 153–170; Anne Magnussen, ‘Mara and Paracuellos: Interpre­ tations of Spanish Politics from the Perspective of the Comics’, Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art 1, no. 1 (2012): 26–44; Elena Masarah, ‘Cuando Dibujar es politico: Historiografía y memoria de las autoras de cómic en la Transición’ [When drawing is political: Historiography and memory of the comic authors during the Transition], CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic 5 (2015): 54–75; Álvaro Pons, ‘­Micharmut: Más allá de la vanguardia’ [Micharmut: Beyond the avant-garde], CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic 3 (2014): 51–65; Maricarmen Vila, ‘Historieta fe­ minista y erotismo: Las relecturas del cuerpo’ [Feminist comics and eroticism: Rereadings of the body], Historietas 2 (2012): 97–104. 19 Anne Magnussen, ‘Spanish Comics and Politics’, in Comics und Politik / Comics and Politics, ed. Stephan Packard (Berlin: Christian A. Bachmann Verlag, 2014), 157–178.

10

Anne Magnussen

regional cultural initiatives involved the comics medium from the early 1980s and onwards.20 Recently, comics research has caught up with the regional comics development, as it has seen a surge in the interest in re­ gional comics, from historical overviews to analyses of specific works and themes. These studies include accounts of comics his­ tory in Catalonia, Galicia, Valencia, Mallorca and Asturias.21 Many of the comics and caricatures treated in these studies are also in­ cluded in general accounts of comics history. This is especially true for Catalan and Valencian comics, as they have had a major impact on the Spanish comics scene at large and are therefore typically also included in national comics histories and accounts. However, what is (relatively) new is that in the regional comics histories focus is on an explicit regional viewpoint. As an example in point, David Miranda-Barreiro’s chapter, ‘From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth. Castelao in Galician Graphic Biography’ is about Galician comics in its concern with comics representations of Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao, a Galician comics artist and one of the founders of Galician nation­ alism from the early 20th century. It has its point of departure in Castelao’s own work as a caricaturist during the first three decades of the 20th century, with its main focus on other comics artists’ interpretations of Castelao in comics biographies published in the 1970s and 2000s. An explicit preoccupation with the immediate past and with national history did nevertheless become very visible from around 2000, although it had not been completely invisible before that. In his chapter, ‘The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics. Remembering the Civil War and Francoism’, Juan Carlos Pérez García addresses the historical memory of repression, as he traces the representations of the Spanish Civil War and the dic­ tatorship in comics from the 1970s to the 2010s. In this way the 20 As part of the political transition Spain was divided into 18 autonomies that all engaged with cultural projects in efforts to reassert regional identities. The re­ gional focus did not involve only the three historical regions. 21 Catalonia: McGlade, Catalan Cartoons; Jordi Riera Pujal, ‘El Cómic en catalán: De la postguerra a la Transición’ [Comics in Catalan: From the post-war period to the Transition], Tebeosfera 3 (2008). Galicia: Carballo Dopico, Os Pioneiros; Va­ lencia: Porcel and Sorní, Viñetas a la luna de Valencia; Francisco Tadeo Juan, ‘The Valencia School: Pioneer of Spanish Comic Strips’, International Journal of Comic Art 7, no. 1 (2005): 485–503; Mallorca: Francisca Lladó Pol, Trenta anys de còmic a Mallorca (1975–2005) [Thirty years of comics in Mallorca (1975–2005)] (Palma: Edicions Documenta Balear, 2009); Asturias: Mercedes Fernández Menéndez, ed., Asturias: Imágenes de historieta y realidades regionales [Asturias: Comics images and regional realities] (Oviedo: Servicio de Publicaciones Universidad de Oviedo, 1999).



Introduction 11

chapter introduces the emergence and development of memory as one of the most prominent themes in Spanish comics from 2000 onwards. The Spanish focus on historical memory was part of an inter­ national interest in comics and memory, and in the Spanish case, many comics homed in on memories of the Civil War and the dictatorship as described by Pérez García.22 At the same time, the new memory comics and the accompanying research was part of a pronounced interest and movement in Spain concerned with his­ torical memory. Now, 20 years after this process began in earnest, memory continues to be a central theme in many comics and in comics research, but the focus has shifted, which will be apparent in the next section. Parallel to many of the comics’ explicit representation of the recent past, another genre of historical comics can be found. In his chapter on the Middle Ages in Spanish comics, ‘For He Be­ stirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’. Depicting the ­Medieval Reconquista in Modern Spanish Graphic Novels’ Iain A. MacInnes compares the way in which comics in the 1970s and 2010s represent the Spanish Middle Ages and define the (non-Spanish) Other, while arguing that there is a high degree of continuity between the two time periods. The comics analyzed by MacInnes belong to a genre of historical comics that have been part of the Spanish scene since at least the late 1940s and that have developed alongside the more dominant trends within the field. There is a considerable inf luence from the Franco-Belgian comics tradition in these historical comics, and MacInnes’ analysis draws attention to the fact that Spanish comics are in continuous interaction with comics characteristics and developments beyond national borders. The historical comics also indicate that any period 22 David Miranda-Barreiro, ’Invoking the past in graphic biographies: The life, death and ghostly return of Alexandre Bóveda’, Studies in Comics 10, issue 1 (2019): 27–48; David Fernández de Arriba, ‘La Memoria del exilio a través del comic: Un largo silencio, El arte de volar y Los surcos del azar’ [The memory of exile in A Long Silence, The Art of Flying and Twists of Fate], CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic 4 (2015): 7–34; Anne Magnussen, ‘The New Spanish Memory Comics: The Example of Cuerda de presas’, European Comic Art 7, no. 1 (2014), 56–84; Michel Matly, ‘El Cómic español y la guerra civil: Transición y primera década de democracia 1976–1992’ [Spanish comics and the Civil War: the Transition and the first decade of democracy], Tebeosfera 12 (2014); Ana Merino and Brittany Tullis, ‘The Sequential Art of Memory: The Testimonial Struggle of Comics in Spain’, Hispanic Issues On Line 11 (2012): 211–225; Hartmut Nonnenmacher, ‘La Memo­ ria del franquismo en el cómic español’ [The memory of Francoism in Spanish comics], in Lugares de memoria de la guerra civil y el franquismo [Memory sites of the Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship], ed. Ulrich Winter (Frankfurt and Madrid: Vervuert and Iberoamericana, 2006), 177–208.

12

Anne Magnussen

includes a series of different genres, topics and audiences, although some may be more visible or dominant than others. Miranda-Barreiro, Pérez García and MacInnes’ chapters all in­ volve a longer time span than most of the chapters in the anthol­ ogy, as they compare comics published primarily in the 1970s and after 2000. All three also exemplify one of the newer developments within comics research (generally speaking), namely the combina­ tion of work-oriented analyses with historical accounts of continuity and change over time. These two research perspectives were mostly separate until relatively recent times in comics studies: either a study was on comics history and historical context – not delving into the complexities of the comics medium as an aesthetic ex­ pression – or it did exactly this, it attended to the single artwork so that the broader cultural, societal context disappeared altogether.23 Although the time span is less explicit in the following section of chapters, all the anthology’s chapters modify to different degrees such a separation between historical account and textual analysis.

Contemporary Comics: Memory, personal spheres, didactics and (again) social protest Above I mentioned that Spanish comics of the late 1980s and 1990s did not explicitly engage with Spain as a whole, or at least not to any significant degree. Their dominant themes typically either zoomed in on the intimate sphere or outwards to locations that were not immediately recognizable as Spain. On a very general level it could be argued that the Spanish comics of that period had become truly European, paralleling the country’s societal development as Spain became part of a democratic, European community along with the political transition. At the same time, though, the comics repre­ sented a series of characteristics that both related back to the new material of the 1970s and forward to the 2000s and 2010s. In the 1980s and 1990s, Spanish comics experimented with new themes, as well as with aesthetics and the comics format, and the period saw the consolidation of a series of renowned comics artists and 23 Anne Magnussen, ’Forestillinger om Middelalderen under det Franquistiske Diktatur. Tegneserier som historiske kilder [Imagining the Middle Ages during the Francoist Dictatorship. Comics as historical sources], in Visuel Historie. Tilgange og eksempler [Visual history. Approaches and examples], eds. Anne Magnus­ sen, Kirstine Sinclair and Casper Sylvest (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2018), 123–138. For further discussion of comics as historical source material in between textual analyses and general historical accounts, see also Anne Magnus­ sen, ‘Comics as Historical Source Material: Race, Ethnicity and Power According to Texas History Movies’, Studies in Comics 7, issue 1 (2016): 99–125.



Introduction 13

auteur comics that became more and more visible also beyond Spanish borders. In spite of the fact that the period was charac­ terized by faltering sales, it represented important aesthetic devel­ opments that became crucial from 2000, where Spanish comics (as comics elsewhere) seemed to reemerge against all odds and in competition with new media and technologies. Within comics scholarship, the first overviews of comics devel­ opment and publishing from the 1990s onwards are emerging.24 However, most studies of late 1980s–1990s comics are concerned with comics as literary or artistic works in their own right, includ­ ing a variety of themes, from intertextuality and monstrosity to the representations of place.25 Other comics studies of this period zoom in on the comics medium and aesthetics, using individual Spanish comics as their main examples.26 24 Juan Manuel Díaz de Guereñu, ‘El Cómic español desde 1995’ [Spanish comics since 1995], in Altarriba, ed., La Historieta española, 209–220; Santiago García, ‘En el Umbral: El cómic español contemporáneo’ [On the threshold: Contempo­ rary Spanish comics], in Altarriba, ed., La Historieta española, 255–263; Anne Magnussen, ‘Spanish Comics and Politics’; Álvaro Pons, ‘La Industria del comic en España: Radiografía de un mito o una realidad?’ [The comic industry in Spain: X-ray of a myth or a reality?], in Altarriba, ed., La Historieta española, 265–273. 25 Sarah D. Harris, ‘The Monster Within and Without: Spanish Comics, Monstros­ ity, Religion, and Alterity’, in Representing Multiculturalism in Comics and Graphic Novels, ed. Carolene Ayaka and Ian Hague (Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 2014), ­113–129; Ana Merino, ‘Intertextuality: Superrealist Intertextualities in Max’s Bardín’, in Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods, ed. ­Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan (New York: Routledge, 2012), 252–264; Miguel A. Pérez-Gómez, ‘Analizando Neurope: La construcción de mundo en la obra de Miguel Ángel Martín’ [Analyzing Neurope: The construction of the world in the work of Miguel Ángel Martín], CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic 6 (2016): 34–61. 26 Guy Abel, ‘Trazo de tiza de Miguelanxo Prado: El improbable relato entre novela y cuadro’ [Streak of chalk by Miguelanxo Prado: The improbable story between novel and painting], in Alary, ed., Historietas, 196–209; Jean Alsina, ‘La narración en El artefacto perverso: Algunas Calas en un objeto inagotable’ [Narration in The Perverse Artefact: A few slices of an infinite object], in Alary, ed., Historietas, 210–228; Viviane Alary, ‘Briefness in Spanish Comics: A Few Landmarks’, International Journal of Comic Art 5, no. 2 (2003): 5–27; Benjamin Fraser, ‘Tactile comics, disability studies and the mind’s eye: on “A Boat Tour” (2017) in Venice with Max’, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (2020): 1–13; Argelio García, ‘Una Viñeta memorable y su pericampo en 36–39 Malos tiempos’ [A memora­ ble panel and its hyper frame in 36–39 Bad Times], CuCo, Cuadernos de Cómic, no. 12 (2019): 71–93; Óscar García López, ‘El Cómic como experiencia (un Be­ ta-test de la narratividad del medio a partir de la obra de Begoña García-Alén)’ [Comic as Experience (Beta-testing comics narrativity based on Begoña GarcíaAlén’s work)], CuCo, Cuadernos de Cómic, no. 12 (2019): 27–50; Anne Magnussen, ‘The Semiotics of C. S. Peirce as a Theoretical Framework for the Understand­ ing of Comics’, in Comics and Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics, eds. Anne Magnussen and Hans-Christian Christiansen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2000), 193–207; Jesús Jiménez Varea, ‘Formas y contenidos: Evolución del lenguaje y de los argumentos en la historieta española’ [Form and content: Evolution of language and arguments in Spanish comics],

14

Anne Magnussen

One of the Spanish ‘post-2000’ comics artists who has gained both national and international renown is Paco Roca. This anthology includes an interview with Roca as well as two chapters about the artist’s work – and even about the same graphic novel, La casa from 2015. In the first part of this introduction, I mentioned that the book’s 12 chapters were the result of a serendipitous process from call for papers, through abstracts, proposals and review ­process to the actual articles or chapters. In this process, the anthology’s sub­ stantial – relatively speaking – focus on Roca is not the result of a deliberate decision, but rather a coincidence. It does show, however, that Paco Roca’s work is tremendously popular, and it also offers the reader the possibility of seeing how different perspectives, re­ search questions and conceptual frameworks lead to quite differ­ ent insights into this one work, La casa. Esther Claudio’s chapter, ‘An interview with Paco Roca’, contributes with reflections from the artist himself, which constitute important insights in and of themselves, but also function as contextualization for the two suc­ ceeding analyses. La casa is an example of the significance of the graphic novel as a dominant genre, as well as of how memory continues to be an important theme today, although without a national frame. With an explicit reference to the topic of memory in Spanish comics, Sarah D. Harris discusses the use of metaphors and memory in the chapter, ‘“They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds”: Intergenerational Memory and La casa’, but from a perspec­ tive that is intimate and family related rather than collectively polit­ ical and/or with specific references to Spanish history. The chapter illustrates, therefore, how memory as a theme has evolved from the 1970s to the 2010s, from a denunciation of Francoist dictatorship through historical memory to more intimate and hetero­geneous memories in recent years. 27 In his chapter, ‘Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa (2015) as Architectural Elegy’, Benjamin Fraser ­analyses how architecture represents grief in sophisticated ways in the graphic novel. The analysis illustrates how La casa thematizes the general human condition and refers to broader developments within the fields of European and US comics at large. The focus on the individual and on the human condition is seen also in another relatively recent genre, namely that of graphic medi­ in Altarriba, ed., La Historieta española, 43–61; Óscar Gual Boronat, Viñetas de posguerra: Los cómics como fuente para el estudio de la historia [Post-war panels: Comics as a source for historical studies] (Valencia: Universitat de València, 2013). 27 The historical memory of the Spanish past continues as a topic, although seem­ ingly not as dominant as in the 2000s.



Introduction 15

cine with its focus on educating and reflecting upon illness and healthcare. The topic is universal rather than nationally anchored, but Spanish comics has contributed with several examples that have gained international renown.28 In her chapter, ‘Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Graphic Novels’, Agatha Mohring ana­ lyzes some of these comics and discusses how they use the jour­ ney as a metaphor to represent illness as pathography. In this way Mohring’s chapter illustrates how Spanish comics participate in the international comics field, but it is also proof of the high stand­ ard among Spanish comics artists today, some of which have been part of the national comics field since the early 1980s, if not before. As a genre, graphic medicine includes a didactic component, and it shows that didactic comics are not (or no longer) to be regarded as primarily efficient in their communication, but ­uninteresting as artistic works. This is seen also in other, somewhat didactic comics after 2000. Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes’ chapter, ‘Social Criticism through Humour in the Digi­ tal Age. Multimodal Extension in the Works of Aleix Saló’, shows how Aleix Saló uses different media in his critical, humorous and informational comments about the economic crisis in Spain from 2008 and onwards. Muñoz-Basols and Massaguer Comes analyze the role of multimodality and Saló’s sophisticated uses of digital media. At the same time, they argue, the artist draws on a long tra­ dition of Spanish comics artists and cartoonists, referring back to the political and social activism of the magazines and fanzines for an adult audience that emerged in the 1970s. The analy­sis of Saló’s work draws attention to one of the most exciting developments in the comics field – in Spain and beyond – namely of comics as an actor in the social and political debate.29 Such political and social activism is not new to Spanish comics, as the reference above to the 1970s political transition indicate, but the technological and artistic framework is new, making it highly relevant today too. The chapter therefore also illustrates the point indicated at the beginning of this introduction; that Spanish comics is the result of transnational ­processes involving both national and international influences. 28 Ryan Prout, ‘Mapping Neuro-diverse Alterity in “Social and Sensitive” Comics from Spain’, International Journal of Comic Art 15, no. 1 (2013): 84–99; Brittany Tullis, ‘Paco Roca’s Arrugas, Miguel Ángel Gallardo’s María y yo, and the Impact of Social Comics in Contemporary Spain’, International Journal of Comic Art 14, no. 2 (2012): 77–89; 29 Jorge Catalá Carrasco, ‘Neoliberal Expulsions, Crisis, and Graphic Reportage in Spanish Comics’, Romance Quarterly 64, no. 4 (2017): 172–184; Jorge Catalá Carrasco, ‘Cómic, 15M y crisis en España’, Tebeosfera 3, no. 5 (2017); Ryan Prout, ‘From Boom to Bubble and Bust: Comical Economics in Aleix Salós Troika Tril­ ogy’, International Journal of Comic Art 16, no. 1 (2014): 458–476.

16

Anne Magnussen

Spanish comics scholarship and beyond Spanish comics scholarship has been a recurrent reference in this introduction, but it is worthwhile to sum up, especially as it offers the opportunity of introducing the first emergence of comics re­ search in Spain. More or less at the same time as the surge of the new 1970s comics emerged a first, substantial scholarly focus on the comics form and aesthetics in Spain. In his chapter, ‘Historicis­ ing the Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain, 1965–1975’, Antonio Lázaro-Reboll analyses how cultural intermediaries – pri­ marily publishing houses, magazines and comics critics – created a first generation of Spanish comics criticism and research in close interaction with similar developments in France and Italy. Lázaro-Reboll describes a crucial period in Spanish comics his­ tory that provided original theoretical arguments for its time and that – in spite of its transnational characteristics – has been largely unknown to most comics scholars outside of Spain. With its European interaction and its theoretical focus, this first group of scholars and critics contributed to the discussion of the complexities of the comics format, which only gained speed from the 1980s within Franco-Belgian comics research.30 However, the group did not to a similar extent focus on Spanish comics history, or present analyses of individual works. Such a specifically Spanish focus did not become dominant until the 1990s. Since this first wave of comics scholarship in Spain the field has only grown, especially since 2000, and mostly from within ­Spanish borders. However, the contributors to this book, their chapters’ bibli­ographies, and the bibliographical references in this introduc­ tion indicate that there is also a growing international scholarly interest in Spanish comics. The publications relating to Spanish comics scholarship that are mentioned in the following summary are all represented a large number of times in the individual chap­ ter references. English-language studies of Spanish comics are typically pub­ lished in either comics research journals, edited books about comics or books with a common theme such as memory. In ­Spanish, there are several monographs, as well as the open access academic journal CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic (since 2013), which features a focus on academic studies as one of its twice-yearly 30 In his forthcoming memoir, Une vie dans les cases, Thierry Groensteen describes his years as editor of Les Cahiers de la bande dessinée in the 1980s, offering a fasci­ nating look into part of this process that also involved some of the first generation Spanish comics critics. The memoir’s chapter about Les Cahiers will appear in English translation in European Comic Art 13, number 2 (forthcoming 2020).



Introduction 17

s­ ections, and the journal Tebeosfera (since 2001) linked to the plat­ form of the same name. Both include a relatively high number of articles about Spanish comics, although they also publish articles about non-Spanish comics.31 Moreover, since 2000, a few special issues and edited books spe­ cifically about Spanish comics have been published. In English, the International Journal of Comic Art (vol. 5, no. 2) published a special issue in 2003. In Spanish, two publications stand out, namely a special issue of the journal Arbor in 2011 and an edited book in 2002.32 All three combine articles about Spanish comics history with analyses of specific comics and artists. They include texts by some of the key Spanish comics scholars and constitute an excel­ lent representation of the main topics that were current within the field at the time of their writing. Apart from conventional academic texts, comics scholars draw on resources that are not considered to be part of comics research proper. The line between academic and non-academic publica­ tions is somewhat blurred in comics research, criticism and com­ mentary. Some texts are meant for a general audience and do not necessarily follow academic conventions with regards to for ex­ ample documentation, argumentation and reference to relevant research fields, but they nevertheless offer valuable information for researchers. Another valuable source is the material relating to exhibitions for example about regional comics that in many ways follow academic standards and conventions.33 Even though much of this material is difficult to obtain, it is certainly a worthwhile part of research into Spanish comics. A third kind of alternative resource includes the platforms Tebeo­sfera and PACE. Tebeosfera.com is a rich and invaluable source of information for many references and much information regarding Spanish comics, authors, works, artists, activities and publications.34 PACE (Plataforma Académica sobre el Cómic en Español) is a relatively new and promising initiative, not so much 31 There is also the apparently short-lived Historietas: Revista de estudios sobre la historieta [Comics. Journal of Comics Studies] published by the University of Cádiz, which saw three issues from 2011 to 2013. These were thematic – history, women and the 1940s – and included both foreign and Spanish material. 32 Antonio Altarriba edited the special issue of Arbor: La Historieta española, and Viviane Alary edited Historietas. 33 As indicated above, comics played an important role in the strengthening of cultural regional identities as part of the democratization process from the 1980s in Spain. 34 Another valuable resource for comics until the mid-1990s is Cuadrado, Diccionario del uso de la historieta.

18

Anne Magnussen

for publications but rather for networking among comics scholars and for the exchange of publications.35 As the chapters in this book indicate, Spanish comics are worth­ while reading and studying in their own right, but they also offer a particular perspective on European comics and the field’s his­ tory. As the final sketch of Spanish comics scholarship shows, it has become by 2020 a lively research field to which this anthology contributes, hopefully with new ideas and inspiration to future re­ searchers delving into the exciting field of Spanish comics.

Anne Magnussen is Associate Professor, PhD, at the Department of History, University of Southern Denmark. She has published edited volumes and a series of journal articles about comics as well as on visual culture at large, including movies and historical monu­ ments. Apart from her interest in comics, Magnussen’s research includes ethnicity and power on the US-Mexican border in the first half of the 20th century. Anne Magnussen is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal European Comic Art.

35 PACE, ‘Platforma’, https://pace.hypotheses.org (accessed 21 June 2020).

Chapter 1

Dissenting Voices? Controlling Children’s Comics under Franco Rhiannon McGlade

The rich history of comics in Spain owes much to the tradition for including illustrated narratives, caricatures and humorous cartoons in the country’s satirical press, which began in the nineteenth century.1 Nevertheless, since these periodicals also featured an abundance of text, it was not until the arrival of the children’s publication Dominguín (1915–1916) – consisting exclusively of illustrated strips – that the comics genre in Spain truly began. 2 The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the AHRC in the preparation of this chapter, which was funded as part of the research project, ‘Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies’, under the Open World Research Initiative. 1 Rhiannon McGlade, Catalan Cartoons: A Cultural and Political History (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016), 21. 2 Until Dominguín’s arrival, cartoon strips were deemed incompatible with the intended didactic outlook of children’s publications. See Antonio Martín, ‘Apuntes para una historia de los tebeos II: La Civilización de la imagen (1917–1936)’ [Notes for a history of comics II: The civilisation of the image], Revista de ­Educación 195 (1968), 7–21 (8). All translations of non-English references and quotations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

20

Rhiannon McGlade

­ echnological improvements in printing and pictorial reproducT tion at the turn of the twentieth century had made a cheaper press possible and saw a concentration of publishers establish themselves in Barcelona and Valencia. These technological changes reflected rising literacy levels, which had spawned a growing popularity in recreational reading. In this context, two publications, TBO (1917–1998) and Pulgarcito [Tom Thumb] (1921–1986), established a foothold for this new type of entertainment, which by the 1920s had become embedded in Spanish society, with TBO – tebeo – soon becoming the proprietary eponym of choice.3 Echoing Dominguín, both TBO and Pulgarcito broke away from an educational style in favour of one that was more playful and entertaining, while the delivery of humorous punchlines typically occupied the pictorial, rather than the textual, frame.4 Nevertheless, for its part, Pulgarcito was also responsible for the gradual introduction of speech ­bubbles, a practice already well-established in other nations.5 Challenging for readership, the publication directly undercut TBO’s erstwhile low price of ten cents, charging only five. The success of Pulgarcito was fundamental in allowing its publishing house, El Gato Negro – later ­Bruguera – to establish itself in the burgeoning comics market.6 Indeed, the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939) marked a generally prosperous period for the tebeo, which was helped in part by the economic growth following Spain’s neutrality during the First World War, as well as by a rise in domestic comic production that came as a response to the influence of the American adventure comic.7 The period also saw the intensification of a fierce rivalry between TBO and Pulgarcito, during which B ­ ruguera reportedly prohibited its contributors from using the word tebeo in their work – despite its consolidation within the ­vernacular – in case it might inadvertently promote the opposition.8 Although the outbreak of the Civil War naturally brought challenges of its own, initially many publications were able to continue, 3 Viviane Alary, ‘The Spanish Tebeo’, European Comic Art 2, no. 2 (2009), 253–276 (253). The term – adapted from the Spanish te veo [I see you] – remained in use unofficially until it was eventually recognised by the Real Academia Española [Royal Spanish Academy] in 1968. 4 Viviane Alary, ed., Historietas, comics y tebeos españoles [Strip cartoons, comic books and Spanish comics] (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2002), 32. 5 Simone Castaldi, ‘A Brief History of Comics in Italy and Spain’, in The Routledge Companion to Comics, ed. Frank Bramlett, Roy Cook and Aaron Meskin (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 83–87 (83). 6 El Gato Negro was established in 1910, initially publishing chapbooks. The company currently trades as Ediciones B, following a takeover by Grupo Zeta in 1987. 7 Alary, ‘The Spanish Tebeo’, 255. 8 Antoni Guiral, 100 años de Bruguera: De El Gato Negro a Ediciones B [100 years of Bruguera: From El Gato Negro to Ediciones B] (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2011), 65.



Dissenting Voices? 21

albeit with more ideologically charged content. Indeed, the recognition of the propagandist potential of the genre saw warring factions keen to establish tebeos of their own. The Nationalists and their Carlist supporters produced comics with the aim of attracting members to their youth organisations, the most famous being Pelayos (1936–1938),9 and Flechas [Arrows] (1937–1938) – which were later merged into Flechas y Pelayos (1938–1949). On the Republican side, Gato Negro was taken over by a syndicate of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo [National Workers’ Confederation] (CNT) on 27 August 1936, although the Bruguera family was subsequently reinstalled to oversee the editorial process.10 TBO was also appropriated, this time by the Consejo de la Escuela Nueva Unificada [Board for the New Unified School] (CENU) with the anarchist influences of the Barcelona graphic art syndicate.11 Joaquim Buigas was permitted to continue in his post as editor on the condition that a dedicated section be included under the heading ‘Floreal: Revista infantil semanal publicada bajo el signo de la Escuela Nueva Unificada’ [Floreal: Weekly children’s magazine published under the New Unified School].12 The occupation of the back page seemed to have little effect on the publication’s content and was short-lived, since Floreal only appeared until June 1937. Indeed, despite political takeovers, according to Viviane Alary, these tebeos showed little interest in the overt propagandist manipulation of their young audiences.13 Nevertheless, the appropriation of tebeos reflected a general awareness on both sides of the power and impact of the press as propaganda as well as of its potential as a threat in the hands of the opposition. Thus, a year before the war’s end, legislative measures were already in place in Nationalist-­occupied areas to control the dissemination of all published material. Originally intended as a provisional measure, the 1938 Press Law reconditioned the press as a puppet of the state and ­dominated the publishing industry for the subsequent three decades of the 9 Pelayos was the name given to the Carlist youth movement in honour of a young Cordovan martyr from the ninth century who kept his faith, despite being tortured by the emir Abderramán. See Didier Corderot, ‘Adoctrinar deleitando, el ejemplo de la revista Pelayos (1936–1938)’ [Delighting in indoctrination, the example of the magazine Pelayos], Hispanística 20 (2003), 93–108 (94). 10 Antonio Martín, Historia del comic español: 1875–1939 [The history of the Spanish comic] (Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 1978), 189. 11 Antoni Marimon, Guerrers, corsaris, soldats i detectius [Warriors, corsairs, soldiers and detectives] (Palma: Edicions Documenta Balear, 2005), 309. Established in 1936, CENU sought to overhaul access to education in Catalonia, promoting a rationalist perspective free from religious influence. 12 The name was a reference to the eighth month of the French Republican Calendar. 13 Alary, Historietas, comics y tebeos españoles, 37.

22

Rhiannon McGlade

dictatorship. In its preamble, the legislation charged the free press of the republic with engendering ‘Un sistema metódico de destrucción del Estado, decidido por el rencor de poderes ocultos’ [A methodical system of destruction of the state, driven by the resentment of occult powers] and identified a need to ‘despertar en la Prensa la idea del servicio al Estado’ [awaken in the press the notion of service to the state]. As part of this decree, the state assumed overall control of journalism as a profession, including the organisational structures of newspapers. The press was now responsible for disseminating state orders and directives to the public, as well as for cultivating community conscience and steering cultural formation. Thus, all material for print or broadcast had to first be submitted for official approval. A significant challenge created by the 1938 Press Law was the lack of an articulated procedure in the day-to-day application of censorship, which naturally created discrepancies.14 Moreover, many of those charged with overseeing the process during the Franco period were under immense pressure themselves. With no extra training and no structured boundaries, these government employees worked mostly arbitrarily within the broad categories of political opinions; sexual morality; religion; and improper uses of language, the latter being particularly designed to prevent the appearance of Spain’s ‘other’ languages as well as of dialectal variations of these.15 These challenging conditions were still more pressured since censors were personally responsible for the material that passed for publication, being subject to reprimand – including loss of salary and position – for failure to apply the law.16 Growing political pressures notwithstanding, by 1938 access to materials was becoming more of a challenge and the notice­ably inferior quality of paper available rendered colour production un­ tenable. In large part because of these logistical pressures, TBO was forced to suspend publication. Nevertheless, during the industry’s state of semi-paralysis, Pulgarcito limped to the finish line of the Civil War, only to be silenced by Barcelona’s eventual capitulation to Nationalist troops.17

14 Items censored in Madrid could be found authorised elsewhere. See Justino Sinova, La Censura de prensa durante el franquismo [The censorship of the press during Franco­ism] (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1989), 149. 15 Manuel L. Abellán, Censura y creación literaria en España (1936–1976) [Censorship and literary creation in Spain] (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 1980), 88. 16 Sinova, La Censura de prensa, 141–142. 17 Guiral, 100 años de Bruguera, 32.



Dissenting Voices? 23

The Tebeo in Post-war Spain In the wake of a three-year conflict, the prohibitive cost of paper and printing had by no means improved. However, the playing field had now shifted; those publications that had shown support for the victorious Nationalists, such as Flechas y Pelayos, were not only granted permission to publish regularly but were also afforded subsidised rates for materials. Unsurprisingly, those that were not given the same freedoms struggled both economically – forced to pay the market price for paper – and against substantial bureaucracy in order to be able to produce and distribute their publications with any semblance of periodicity. Naturally, the overtly critical publications that formed part of the erstwhile satirical industry located in the Republican stronghold were shut down without delay. In addition, the individuals that had contributed to these maligned periodicals also found themselves unofficially – and in some cases officially – blacklisted. In order to continue working, the cartoonists amongst these practitioners were faced with three options: exile; clandestine production, which faded following the lack of Allied intervention in Spain at the end of the Second World War; and/or seeking employment in the recovering tebeo industry.18 With many of the country’s finest graphic artists opting for the latter, somewhat ironically, Francoist repression sparked a boom in the production and quality of Spain’s comics industry during the 1940s and 1950s. Tebeos were still subject to censorship under the general umbrella of cultural production. However, while there was a discernible focus on ensuring the avoidance of sexualised images and nudity, violent themes and even examples of sadomasochistic torture could still be found in tebeos of the early 1940s.19 The initial lack of attention paid to the medium is ambiguous. On the one hand, it is feasible that the genre was still not taken seriously as a possible threat in terms of content. Indeed, Manuel Barrero and Jordi Manzanares have argued that the roots of the tebeo’s dismissal as a mere frivolity lie predominantly with TBO because of the immutably childish and bland content of what was still c­ onsidered the prototype of the comics genre.20 On the other hand, given the regime’s vague directives, censors were already overwhelmed by the sheer volume of potentially subversive newspapers, films, 18 See McGlade, Catalan Cartoons, 120–166. 19 Marimon, Guerrers, corsaris, soldats i detectius, 16. 20 Manuel Barrero and Jordi Manzanares, ‘El tebeo que dió nombre a los demás’ [The comic that gave a name to the rest], in Tebeos: Las revistas infantiles [Tebeos: Children’s magazines] (Seville: ACyT, 2014), 13–97 (58).

24

Rhiannon McGlade

books and other material directed at an adult audience. As a result, beyond the preoccupations of a few outspoken religious figures, the impetus to formally scrutinise the comics genre took several years to emerge. Thus, although restrictions and penalties were still an everyday occurrence, the lack of directed attention to control the medium allowed comics to act as a social barometer during the early years of the dictatorship. As Alary remarks, the tebeo became ‘part of the fabric of everyday life in the post-war period, part of the urban landscape, creating a common space and a possibility for social exchange’.21 The particular brand of graphic humour found in tebeos of the 1940s and 1950s ‘evoked an unofficial but no less real Spain, that of ordinary people in the post-war period’.22 While there is some dispute over exact dates, TBO was the first of the non-Nationalist-­ affiliated publications of its kind to return. However, it was unable to attain any form of perio­dicity until 1946, when it began to appear monthly, only moving to fortnightly in 1949.23 Keen to avoid missing the opportunities of this resurgent market, Pulgarcito returned to the shelves – although it was almost unrecognisable – at the end of 1946. These tebeo stalwarts were able to manipulate a loophole in the law by publishing issues without numbers or dates and making slight changes – typically through the use of subheadings – to suggest that each submission was an entirely new publication. While Bruguera rebelled and hid numbers within its publications, Buigas, always more conservative in his approach, did not return to numeration until a change in the law in 1952. This divergent approach to the legislation was indicative of the overall way in which the two publications tackled their return to the market. While Buigas and TBO had sought to resume its light, atemporal approach to humour, Bruguera took the opportunity to inject Pulgarcito with a new lease of life, hiring a new team of contributors to reach a broader audience that would now include an older readership. Indeed, the editorial’s post-war monopoly on the country’s finest cartoonists inspired Terenci Moix’s identification of the ‘Escuela Bruguera’ [Bruguera School].24 21 Alary, ‘The Spanish Tebeo’, 261–262. 22 Ibid., 264–266. 23 Following Antonio Martín, Apuntes para una historia de los tebeos [Notes for a history of comics] (Barcelona: Ediciones Glénat, 2000), 132–133, it has been widely stated that TBO reappeared in 1941; however, Barrero has propounded a compelling argument dating the publication’s return to June 1943. See Manuel Barrero, ‘El TBO de Buigas, el TBO de siempre’ [The TBO of Buigas, the TBO of always], Tebeosfera 8 (2011), n.p. 24 Terenci Moix, Los ‘Comics’: Arte para el consumo y formas ‘pop’ [‘Comics’: Art for consumption and ‘pop’ forms] (Barcelona: Llibres de Sinera, 1968).



Dissenting Voices? 25

Initially characterised by short strips featuring ephemeral characters – although some did enjoy relative periods of endurance – TBO nevertheless also laid claim to one of the longest-running and most iconic series in the history of the Spanish tebeo, La Familia Ulises (1945–1998). Drawn and written by Marino Benejam (1890– 1975) and Buigas, respectively, the strip humorously charted the daily travails of a middle-class family from Barcelona. The strong focus on its patriarch Ulises Higueruelo, who always had cause for complaint via extensive monologues, has led Salvador Vázquez de Parga to argue that the series could not be considered part of the family sub­genre.25 The remaining family members were, however, developed characters in their own right, and played discernible roles in the elaboration of the narrative. Ulises’s wife, Sinforosa, was an unquestionable social climber who was keen to marry off their attractive daughter, Lolín, to a rich suitor. The younger children, Merceditas and Policarpito – often accompanied by the family dog, Tresky – typically introduced a mischievous yet kind-hearted tone. Meanwhile, hailing from rural Catalonia, Sinforosa’s mother, Doña Filomena, was the source of much of the humour in the strip via malapropisms and mispronunciations involving Catalan-­ Castilian linguistic play. Beyond the surface humour created by these linguistic foibles, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán has observed that ‘los catalanismos que se infiltraban en el habla cotidiana (. . .) traducían la irregularidad de una situación, satirizaban los esfuerzos de aquella burguesía pequeñísima por hacer meritos en la nueva situación’ [the Catalanisms that in­fi ltrated everyday speech translated the irregularity of a situation and satirised the efforts of this petite bourgeoisie to gain recognition in the new situ­ation].26 Benejam played down the existence of any political critique in his depiction of the family’s life, claiming that it was nothing more than observational humour.27 Indeed, as Barrero has noted, Buigas was typically conservative and conformist in his approach, something that was reflected in the bland humour that typified TBO.28 And yet, in the elaboration of La Familia Ulises, the costumbrist style – depicting local everyday life and customs – undoubtedly 25 Salvador Vázquez de Parga, Los comics del franquismo [The comics of Franco­ism] (Barcelona: Planeta, 1980), 178. 26 In Joan Navarro, Papeles encontrados (2): Vázquez Montalban escribe sobre La Familia Ulises [Uncovered papers (2): Vázquez Montalban writes about La Familia Ulises] (15 December 2010), http://navarrobadia.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/papeles-­ encontrados-2-vazquez-montalban.html. 27 Román Gubern, ‘Prólogo’ [Prologue], in Alary, Historietas, comics y tebeos españoles, 7–12 (10). 28 Barrero and Manzanares, ‘El tebeo que dió nombre a los demás’, 54.

26

Rhiannon McGlade

facilitated elements of social critique manifested via its reflection of extant social divisions. One of the most successful cartoonists of the Bruguera School was Josep Escobar (1908–1994), who was responsible for many of the publishing house’s best-known strips, including Carpanta (1947), Zipi y Zape (1948) and Doña Tula, suegra [Mrs Tula, mother-­ in-law] (1951). Before arriving at Bruguera, Escobar contributed to the Catalan satirical press and was considered one of the Civil War’s sharpest cartoonists. The bitter experiences of the late 1930s – including internment in Barcelona’s Modelo Prison for assisting the rebellion – left their mark, and many of Escobar’s cartoons projected an acerbic attitude towards the situation of the day. This was particularly discernible in his iconic character, Carpanta, a vagabond who symbolised the hunger, repression and – via his singular protruding tooth – Spain’s poor health and sanitation under the Franco dictatorship.29 Escobar’s creation became a point of reference for Spanish society at the time and was soon imbricated in 1950s culture, as the saying ‘más hambre que Carpanta’ [hungrier than Carpanta] found its way into common parlance. Complementing detectable influences of the Spanish picaresque tradition such as Lazarillo de Tormes and Quevedo’s El Buscón, Escobar also parodied the established convention of comic double acts from Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to the popular Laurel and Hardy when he introduced Carpanta’s sidekick, Protasio – Greek for ‘preferred one’ – who was at once friend and foe. The plot typically took on a structured and predictable form, involving Carpanta’s ingenious attempts to acquire food, which would typically end in failure. This approach supports Alary’s observations that ‘in Pulgarcito, there is no explicit criticism but a parodic tone (. . . and) the mechanism of the gag invariably communicates a fatalistic vision which upholds the established order: the anti-­heroes attempt at all costs to get the upper hand’.30 Thus, the inevitable failure of the protagonist invites the Spanish reader to reflect sardonically on the humour of his or her own harsh reality. Continuing the darker humorous side that typified Pulgarcito in this initial post-war period, Doña Urraca – introduced in 1948 by ‘Jorge’ (1921–1960) – was a sinister middle-aged crone, who typically preyed on the vulnerable for personal gain (Illustration 1.1).31 Perfidious at heart and dressed in the unflattering nineteenth-­ century style of an old spinster, she is adjudged to be a grotesque 29 McGlade, Catalan Cartoons, 134. 30 Alary, ‘The Spanish Tebeo’, 264. 31 Jorge was the pen name of Miguel Bernet.



Dissenting Voices? 27

Illustration 1.1. ‘Doña Urraca se encuentra un billete’ [Doña Urraca finds a note], Pulgarcito 125 (1949), 15. Doña Urraca finds a one thousand peseta note, which blows away. When another man looks like he will get it instead, she knocks him out and runs off with her reward as a policeman gives chase. Once she has finally given her pursuers the slip, she discovers that it is not in fact a one thousand peseta note but rather a flyer indicating how much one could save after more than twenty years of shopping at the advertised supermarket. As well as the violence, the strip contains deception of the authorities and references to No-Do, the regime’s cinematic propaganda arm. Reproduced with the kind permission of Jordi Bernet Cussó.

28

Rhiannon McGlade

representation of the Carlist leader María Rosa Urraca Pastor.32 As we will see, Doña Urraca was later joined by her own metaphorical sparring partner, Caramillo, in an attempt to water down the strip’s typically macabre and nefarious themes. We return to Escobar to introduce his most famous and longest-­ running series, Zipi y Zape (1948). These prepubescent brothers personified the Spanish phrase ‘zipizape’, which denoted the sense of a chaotic brawl, with a clearly discernible influence from comics classics such as Max und Moritz and The Katzenjammer Kids.33 Saturated with Escobar’s critical tone from the outset, the boys’ mischief knew no bounds, nor indeed did their punishments, which included Malaysian and Chinese tortures, as well as the omni­ present and eerie ‘rat room’.34 Two strips equally worthy of mention are Las Hermanas Gilda [The Gilda sisters] and Doña Tula, suegra. The first, a creation of Manuel Vázquez (1930–1995), began in Pulgarcito in 1949 and portrayed the relationship of two single, middle-aged sisters, Hermenegilda and Leovi­gilda. Like that between Carpanta and Protasio and between Zipi and Zape, the relationship between the sisters, and some of the resulting humour in the series, was a product of a clash of opposites: Hermenegilda was plump with a sense of naïve romanticism in her desperate search for a husband, while Leovigilda was slim but unpleasant, suspicious by nature, typically bossy and barely able to withhold her joy at her younger sister’s failures. Inspiration for the strip is said to have come from the film Gilda, which had proved highly controversial on its release in Spain, and from the names of the father and son ­Visigoth rulers Leovigildo and Hermenegildo.35 Vázquez’s creation proved ­popular, also appearing in Bruguera’s new publication DDT contra las penas [DDT against suffering] (1951–1977).36 The arrival of DDT in 1951 was the result of a relaxation and sub­sequent expansion of the official register for permitted 32 Mercedes Ugalde Solano, Mujeres y nacionalismo vasco: Génesis y desarrollo de ­Emakume Abertzale Batza (1906–1936) [Women and Basque nationalism: Genesis and d ­ evelopment of the Emakume Abertzale Batza] (Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco, 1993), 432. 33 Max und Moritz (1865) by Wilhelm Busch (1832–1908) was one of the first children’s comics, and it centres on the lives of two mischievous young boys, later inspiring the Katzenjammer Kids strip by Rudolph Dirks (1877–1968) that appeared in the New York Journal. 34 Antoni Guiral and Joan M. Soldevila, El Mundo de Escobar [The world of Escobar] (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2008), 110–112. The ‘rat’s room’ was a literal depiction of the traditional Spanish threat meted out by parents at the time. 35 Enrique Martínez Peñaranda, Vázquez: El Dibujante y su leyenda [Vázquez: The cartoonist and his legend] (Madrid: Ediciones Sinsentido, 2004), 24–28. 36 Its name was a play on the popular pesticide Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane.



Dissenting Voices? 29

­periodical publications.37 With official status came a reliable and consistent influx of subsidised, superior quality paper, allowing for the publication, along with several other newcomers, to sustain itself in the growing market. Edited by Miguel Martín Monforte (1925–2013) as part of the ‘Bruguera School’, DDT sought a more adult audience, from age 15 to 117, reflecting a growing shift in the genre that gave rise to the subversive satirical publications of the late 1960s and 1970s. Included from DDT’s inception was another Escobar creation, Doña Tula, suegra, (1951–1955). Full of familial disharmony, the strip featured humour that typically hinged upon the caricatured stereotype of the overbearing mother-in-law, which was founded upon a gendered role reversal in the hierarchies of the household. Tula’s son-in-law, Clotildo, habitually found himself on the receiving end of her violence, which she appeared to deliver with impunity since his wife Filomena invariably sided with her mother.

Legislation The Ministry for Information and Tourism, which had taken over the application of censorship from the Ministry of the Interior in 1951, brought a new level of scrutiny to the content of children’s publications. The following year, it established the Junta Asesora de la Prensa Infantil [Children’s Press Advisory Board], which comprised a membership that reflected the regime’s narrow moral compass, including the groups Acción Católica [Catholic Action] and the Comisión de Ortodoxia y Morali­d ad [Commission for Orthodoxy and Morality]. In 1952, the board articulated a series of parameters for publications aimed at children with regard to formatting, the preservation of national Catholic values, and ­appropriate content defined along gender lines.38 In a directive published on 24 June 1955, the ministry asserted the need to bring this previously-­overlooked outlet under governmental control, declaring that: Las publicaciones infantiles deberán adoptar los textos y gráficos (. . .) cuidando de acentuar el debido respeto a los principios religiosos, morales y políticos que fundamente el Estado español. No contendrán, en ningún caso, ideas o descripciones que puedan inducir 37 Victor Mora, Los tebeos de posguerra [Post-war comics] (Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura, 2010), 66. 38 See Ignacio Fernández, ‘Viñetas truncadas: El control sobre las historietas durante el franquismo’ [Truncated panels: The control of comics during Francoism], International Journal of Iberian Studies 30, no. 1: 41–57 (48).

30

Rhiannon McGlade a error o perturbación grave de la formación psicológica o educativa de los niños o jóvenes que las lean. [Children’s publications should adapt their texts and images to suit the psychology of their readers, being mindful to emphasise due ­respect for the religious, moral and political principles of the Spanish state. They should not contain, in any instance, ideas or descriptions that are misleading or detrimental to the psychological or educational development of the children or young people who read them.]

To ensure compliance, dedicated officials were tasked with overseeing moral content. A legal order published in February 1956 ratified the initial decree while expanding its scope. Reiterating that only authorised publications would be permitted to appear periodically – a provision previously laid out in the 1938 Press Law. Not only would those wishing to market this material be required to appear before the Registro de Publicaciones Infantiles de la Dirección General de Prensa [General Press Office Registry for Children’s Publications] – as per the 1952 norms – but they would also be obliged to state with further precision their target audience. In this respect, readerships were categorised by age into young girls and boys; adolescent boys; and adolescent girls. The legislation also contained expanded directives on content that was to be avoided in these publications, including ‘ejemplos destacados de laicismo’ [notable examples of secularism] and ‘humor hacía la ridiculización de la autoridad de los padres, de la santidad de la familia y del hogar, del respeto a las personas que ejercen autoridad, del amor a la Patria y de la obediencia de las Leyes’ [humour that ridicules the authority of parents, the sanctity of the family and the home, respect for people in authority, a love of the fatherland, and obedience of the laws]. Also to be avoided were ‘escenas terroríficas’ [instances of horror], ‘un sentido de humor demasiado cerebral (. . .) para ser infantil, con desconocimiento u olvido del candor y la ingenuidad que fundamenta el sentido infantil de la ironía’ [a sense of humour too cerebral or sterile to be childish, demonstrating ignorance of the candour and ingenuity underlying the childish sense of irony] and ‘deficiencia o incorrección en el uso de la lengua española’ [incorrect use of the Spanish language]. This was not simply a proclivity for grammatical correctness, but rather reflected the Regime’s ardent disavowal of Spain’s multilingual landscape, which it asserted via mottos such as ‘si eres español, habla español [if you are Spanish, speak Spanish], a common sight in the Catalan capital during the post-war years. Lastly, Section VII of the law proposed rewards for ‘model publica-



Dissenting Voices? 31

tions’, as well as fines of between one thousand and ten thousand pesetas and suspensions for infringements. While the influence of the US adventure-superhero comic was growing in the rest of Europe, the legislation of the 1950s also maintained a tight control on the nature of material from abroad as well as the quantity permissible – only 25 per cent according to the 1956 legal order (VI, art. 22). Following these directives, Spanish censors at first rejected many American superheroes on nationalist grounds, going on in the 1960s to object to their promotion of ideas of the supernatural, something potentially injurious to the adolescent psyche.39 Before discussing the fates of the strips outlined above, two key implications of the 1956 order are worthy of note. The first is the trend that it engendered of prior censorship from the managerial perspective of the editorial – prescient of what would become the ‘voluntary consultation’ inscribed by the 1966 Press Law.40 The second is the increasing pressure on cartoonists towards self-­ censure. It is worth reiterating that tebeo production during the 1940s was not designed to be revolutionary per se – despite its often-­subversive tone – and was, rather, a professionalised industry. Thus, apart from the many inevitable conflicts with the censors the primary concern of the cartoonists was to maintain the interest of readers – additionally ensuring paid work – and for the editorial houses it was to make sure that the business not only remained viable but turned a profit. With regard to the latter, censorial intervention, aside from the inevitable impact it had on content, had major and often unpredictable ramifications for the production process. Notwithstanding their having to cover the cost of fines for transgressions, publishing houses had to deal with the inherent delay caused by the additional process of ensuring that each issue would pass to print: this significantly jeopardised the publications’ chances of getting to press in time to maintain a regular and reliable presence in the market. Thus, for Guiral the subsequent creation of systems of in-house censorship can be directly attributed to the 1956 order with the resulting loss of acerbity and, indeed in some cases, the discontinuation of whole series.41

39 Antoni Guiral, Cuando los cómics se llamaban tebeos: La escuela Bruguera (1945– 1963) [When comics were called tebeos: The Bruguera School] (Barcelona: Ediciones El Jueves, 2004), 120. 40 Heralded as a move towards a democratic press, voluntary consultation by no means abolished censorship, but rather transferred responsibility for its application to authors, editors and publishers. See McGlade, Catalan Cartoons, 174. 41 Guiral, 100 años de Bruguera, 60.

32

Rhiannon McGlade

All the aforementioned characters and their parent publications tackled the shift in censorial scrutiny during the initial decades of the dictatorship to varying effects. For reasons of space, rather than an examination of specific examples of censorship,42 what follows is a broader overview of shifts in content in Spanish comics based on extensive consultation with material before and after the press legislation.43 Notwithstanding the context of restricted political and social commentary that ruled out overt references to specific political events, it is worth noting that given the young age of their primary target audience the level of humour found in tebeos needed to be accessible and would thus have typically avoided reliance on political awareness at the punchline. Rather, many of the iconic characters that became synonymous with the period were cast in the role of picaresque anti-heroes, offering an outlet for low-level critique in the form of social observational humour. Blanket objections were more easily advanced against Pulgarcito, which tended towards fixed characters and on a recurrent theme. Indeed, as has been observed in existing histories of the tebeo, the censors almost terminated Carpanta because it challenged the r­ egime’s claim that ‘in Franco’s Spain, no one goes ­hungry’.44 The resulting shift in emphasis that saw starvation replaced by an in­satiable appetite is discernible upon consultation of subsequent episodes. However, given the well-documented arbitrary nature of censorial application during the dictatorship,45 it should be noted that no objection was raised to Carpanta’s life of abject poverty, and his residence under a bridge remained unchanged. It is reasonable to suggest that the failure itself of the character’s attempts to cheat his way to food allowed many strips to pass censorial muster based on a supposed moralising element. Ultimately, Spain’s shift towards economic recovery in the 1960s altered the sociopolitical context, and the backdrop of the hunger years that had made Carpanta so popular lost its relevance. Thus, rather than being the exclusive 42 For this type of study, see Ignacio Fernández, La legislación sobre historieta en España [Legislation on comics in Spain] (Madrid: Asociación Cultural Tebeosfera, 2017); Vicent Sanchis, Tebeos mutilados: La censura franquista contra Editorial Bruguera [Mutilated comics: Francoist censorship against Editorial Bruguera] (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2010). 43 Primary material consulted for the present research includes the archives of the Biblioteca de Catalunya and several private collections. 44 Ana Merino, El cómic hispánico [The Hispanic comic] (Madrid: Cátedra, 2003), 126. 45 See e.g. Abellán, Censura; Sinova, La censura de prensa; McGlade, Catalan Cartoons; Enric Bordería Ortiz, La prensa durante el franquismo: Represión, censura y negocio [The press during the Franco regime: Repression, censorship and business] (Valencia: Fundación Universitaria San Pablo, 2000).



Dissenting Voices? 33

result of censorial pressure, the strip’s waning popularity can also be attributed to the social changes that rendered ­Carpanta’s message of hunger less identifiable. The alterations enforced on Doña Urraca went right to the heart of her character. The censors threatened to axe the strip, which was adjudged to be excessively ‘demoralising’ – for example, her proclivity for ‘killing time in the mortuary’ – unless the protagonist’s character was mollified. Rather than put an untimely end to one of Pulgarcito’s stalwarts, who was certainly responsible for attracting readers away from the competition, Jorge introduced Caramillo to the strip. Cast in the role of sidekick, he played his part in Doña Urraca’s schemes and became the newly-pacified old maid’s permanent victim, counterbalancing her remaining malevolence with his naïvety (Illustration 1.2). This transformed version of her character proved less popular. The shift saw the strip cede its previous mainstay status as it appeared less frequently throughout the latter part of the 1950s and later became an exercise in nostalgia until it was finally discontinued in the 1970s. Zipi y Zape drew the censors’ attention because the characters challenged the ideal familial hierarchy promoted by the regime. More­over, the patent lack of morality in the storylines – in that there was no attempt to suggest lessons were learnt in the episodes’ conclusions – was exactly the type of theme to which the 1956 legis­ lation explicitly objected. The boys’ defiance of their parents and/or teachers, although typically innocuous, was an overt metaphor for challenging repressive authority qua the regime more generally. As a result, Escobar was forced to shift the typical elaboration of the strip to reflect a more costumbrist style, as well as to moderate the level of violence in the characters’ ultimate punishments at the end of the narrative. Nevertheless, an underlying critique of power structures remained, and Zipi y Zape was able to navigate the shifting sociopolitical sands throughout the dictatorship and beyond, adapting to survive the censorial pressures that were to come while still retaining a sense of relevance until the start of the new millennium. For TBO, it was La Familia Ulises that shared most closely the tone of its rival publication, Pulgarcito. Although typically socially centred, the first period of the strip often exhibited a sharp sense of humour that did not shy away from violence or the macabre. An example of this was the fate of the family’s first dog, Kuki, whom they inadvertently ate in ‘La Liebre a la montañesa’ [The hare in the mountains] (1945). However, unlike the continued critique of authority still discernible in Carpanta, Doña Urraca and Zipi y Zape – albeit shrouded – the themes dealt with in the Ulises family

34

Rhiannon McGlade

Illustration 1.2. ‘Doña Urraca’, Pulgarcito 1658 (1963), 16. Reading an announcement about an escaped madman, Doña Urraca warns Caramillo. She thinks she sees the man in question, chases him and beats him into unconsciousness. Caramillo informs her that she has the wrong person, and the man’s sister comes to report her – effecting some physical revenge of her own – with Urraca ending up behind bars. Here, the protagonist is showing concern for Caramillo, is going after a criminal and ends up getting caught by the authorities – three unlikely scenarios in the pre-­legislation strip. Reproduced with the kind permission of Jordi Bernet Cussó.



Dissenting Voices? 35

­ arratives became increasingly bland, with the idiosyncrasies of the n characters becoming a stronger point of focus. Particularly notice­ able was the reduction – and often complete omission – of Filo­ mena’s use of malapropisms, since this was a direct contravention of the 1956 order’s prohibition of the ‘incorrect’ use of the Spanish language. As mentioned earlier, the intention behind this directive exceeded the simple correction of orthographical errors as it sought to eradicate the presence in these publications of Catalan and, indeed, any of Spain’s ‘other’ languages. Buigas’s moderate approach that insisted on innocuous themes saw the strip lose relevance, and as a result its popularity waned, with Pulgarcito eventually overtaking TBO in the long-standing battle for circulation figures.46 Other characters that saw their content, style and even appearance challenged were the Gilda sisters. According to Francisco González Ledesma, Hermenegilda’s hair bun seemed to have a life of its own, serving not only to exaggerate her theatrical responses to developments in the strip but also to suggest sexual innuendo.47 Manuel Vázquez himself was less clear on the censors’ objection, offering the response that it was probably ‘porque moño rima con coño’ [because hair bun rhymes with cunt]. While seemingly churlish, this retort speaks to the inherent frustration amongst the cartooning community of both the arbitrary and often-­irrational reasons cited for the censoring of a piece. Moreover, like Benejam, Vázquez maintains that this particular ‘subversion’ of the sanctity of the family was not a conscious artistic decision: ‘Nadie crea un personaje y lo hace pensando en adoctrinar, como no sea una historieta netamente política, claro’ [Nobody creates a character to indoctrinate, unless it’s a political cartoon, obviously].48 Following censorial directives, Vázquez opted to relocate the sisters to the countryside, couching his situations in surrealist fantasy. Accordingly, the focus in the strips moved from Leovigilda’s harshness to Heremene­gilda’s exaggerated enthusiasm, although the latter usually lacked sexual charge. Nevertheless, the censors still found cause for complaint; for example, when Hermenegilda was depicted riding a centaur, the strip was deemed inadmissible since the creature, although mythical, was male and had a naked chest.49 Nevertheless, despite the imposition of changes and recurrent censorial intervention, the series survived until 1972. 46 Barrero, ‘El TBO de Buigas’. 47 Guiral, 100 años de Bruguera, 64. 48 Manuel E. Darias, ‘Cara a cara con By Vázquez’ [Face to face with By Vázquez], Diario de Avisos (30 April 1978), 15 (this and the previous quotation). 49 Guiral, Cuando los cómics se llamaban tebeos, 120.

36

Rhiannon McGlade

Given Escobar’s trademark mordacity, which was palpable throughout the initial years of the strip, Doña Tula, suegra eventually attracted censorial intervention, coming to be accused of projecting a disharmonious picture of family life that was in direct contrast to the values promoted by the regime. Specifically, the inherent critique of patriarchy, with Tula repeatedly under­mining Clo­tildo’s role as head of the household, was seen as a breach of the directive in the 1956 order to avoid ridiculing the authority of ­parents as well as that of the sanctity of the family and the home.50 The subsequent demand that Escobar soften the behaviour of his protagonist – as had been the demand with Doña Urraca – was a shift too far for her creator. In this case, rather than adhere to the required changes, which certainly would have rendered all of the strip’s characters beyond recognition, Escobar preferred to pull the strip al­together, cutting Doña Tula, suegra short after six popular years. Despite the difficulties and challenges in post-war Spain, the mid-to-late 1940s ref lected a positive reception of the tebeo as the genre managed to carve out a sustainable space of its own. With satirical publications outlawed and any critical lens directed firmly away from the newly established regime, the tebeo represented an escape from the harsh realities of the time. The succession of legislative measures that sought to bring children’s publications under stricter supervision caused a general muffling of the previously caustic humour exhibited by the tebeos of the 1940s. Nevertheless, but for the vision and persistence of those working in the industry during the first two decades of the dictatorship, it is hard to imagine the subsequent evolution of the vibrant and cutting-edge publications of the 1970s and 1980s, whose dissenting voices were instrumental in the country’s so-called transition to democracy.

Rhiannon McGlade is the author of Catalan Cartoons: A Cultural and Political History (University of Wales Press, 2016), which explores the Catalan satirical tradition from 1865 to 1982. Her essays on humour and cartoons have appeared in Romance Quarterly and as part of edited volumes on theatre, narrative, the media and twentieth-­century satirical publications. She is joint coordinator, with Bryan Cameron, of the research project Between the Frames: Politics and Visual Print Media from Spain since 1975 and is Lecturer and Fellow of Christ’s College,University of Cambridge. 50 Ibid., 60.

Chapter 2

Satirical Panels against Censorship A Battle That Raged during the Spanish Transition Gerardo Vilches

The Spanish Transition is a political period commonly dated November 1975 (Francisco Franco’s death) to October 1982, when the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) won the third democratic elections. It was a non-revolutionary and consensual process from an individual dictatorship to a liberal democracy led by the most progressive sector of the former regime, with the approval of King Juan Carlos I, in negotiation with the main forces of the democratic opposition to Franco. The most important key to the Spanish Transition is the fact that citizen pressure was enough to block the continuation of Francoism but not strong enough to force a complete break1 – so much so that all sides had to make concessions to reach a state of full democracy. This chapter has been written in the context of a doctoral investigation being pursued at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Spain. I would like to thank Roberto Bartual for his help with the English translation. 1 Juan Andrade Blanco, ‘Santiago Carrillo en la Transición: Historia y mito del secretario general del PCE’ [Santiago Carrillo in the Transition: History and myth of the general secretary of the PCE], Historia del Presente 24 (2014): 59–76 (62).

38

Gerardo Vilches

According to experts like Ferrán Gallego, the Transition was not an exemplary period, as has been repeatedly said, but rather a complex one fraught with tensions and violence because of the pressure of ­terrorism. 2 A further factor was the continuation of extreme-right groups that were prepared to use violence in the attempt to stop the Transition process. Moreover, Francoist legislation was not transformed at the same rhythm as Spanish society, and this issue generated constant tension between the preservation of order and the need to change it. Press activity was one area in which tension was more obvious. As Ignacio Fontes and Manuel Ángel Menéndez have pointed out, this period saw the publication of a huge spread of magazines and newspapers with a political orientation.3 This was called the parlamento de papel [paper parliament] because of its influence in politics.4 The satirical press played an important role in this publishing explosion, because, through humour, it could be more critical about political issues,5 and provoked censorship to a greater degree. There were many satirical magazines during the last years of Francoism until the end of the Transition: a period that can be considered a real golden age of the satirical press. Magazines like Hermano Lobo [Brother wolf], El Papus, Por Favor [Please] Mata Ratos [Pastime], Butifarra! [One-finger salute!] and El Jueves [Thursday] opened the minds of Spaniards and reflected a sceptical, left-leaning point of view of the Transition. El Papus (1973–1987) was an irreverent magazine published by Elf Ediciones until issue 45 and by Amaika Ediciones after that. Xavier Echarri was its director, and Carlos Navarro its editor. Óscar Nebreda, Ivá, Ja, L’Avi, Carlos Giménez, Gin and Ventura & Nieto were its most important collaborators. El Papus gained huge popularity because of its plain, informal language, its playful spirit and its harsh, even cruel criticism of all politicians.6 In its heyday, 2 Ferrán Gallego, El mito de la transición: La crisis del franquismo y los orígenes de la democracia (1973–1982) [The myth of the Transition: The crisis of Francoism and the origins of democracy] (Barcelona: Planeta, 2008). 3 Ignacio Fontes and Manuel Ángel Menéndez, El Parlamento de papel: Las Revistas españolas en la transición democrática [The paper parliament: Spanish magazines in the democratic Transition] (Madrid: Asociación de Prensa, 2004). 4 Domingo García Ramos, ‘Informaciones políticas (1975–1979): El “Parlamento de papel”’, Historia Actual Online 28 (2012): 101–113 (102). 5 ‘Así como [el humor] puede cuestionar el orden, puede también contribuir a su mejor funcionamiento’ [Just as (humour) can question order, it also can contribute to improve it]. Cristina Peñamarín, ‘El humor gráfico y la metáfora polémica’ [Graphic humor and controversial metaphor], La Balsa de la Medusa 38–39 (1996): 107–132 (110). 6 David Fernández de Castro, dir., El Papus: Anatomía de un atentado [El Papus: Anatomy of an attack], documentary (Cromosoma TV produccions, 2011).



Satirical Panels against Censorship 39

around 1976, El Papus sold more than three hundred thousand ­copies.7 On 20 September 1977, an extreme right-wing group planted a bomb in the El Papus office, killing the door attendant Juan Peñalver and leaving the magazine deeply affected. Por Favor (1974–1978) was founded by a young editor, José Ilario, with the aim of creating a humorous magazine with a political and intellectual slant. It was produced by and for the leftist, pro-democracy middle class.8 As Iván Tubau has written, this magazine was for ‘politi­cised intellectuals’.9 Por Favor maintained an analytical editorial line, with both columns and drawings. Ilario counted on the journalist and writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and some of the most important cartoonists and opinion formers of the Transition, including El Perich, Forges, Antonio Álvarez Solís, Maruja Torres, Juan Marsé and Núria Pompeia. Por Favor was successively published by Punch Ediciones, Garbo Editorial, Editorial Cumbre and Grupo Planeta. El Jueves (May 1977– ) was another initiative of José Ilario, who asked Tom Roca, Carlos Romeu and José Luis Martín to create a new adult humour magazine, based on the style of comics published by Bruguera and with stereotyped characters who reflected the daily life of the country.10 After the extreme-right attack on El Papus, some of its contributors went to El Jueves, including Óscar Nebreda, Gin and V ­ entura & Nieto. In 1980, sales had reached one hundred thousand copies.11 El Jueves is the only such magazine that is still published today, having adapted successfully to social changes.

The Legal Framework Satirical magazines were not considered comics for legal purposes. As Vicent Sanchis’s research has shown, comics were classified 7 María Iranzo, ‘La revista satírica El Papus (1973–1987): Contrapoder comunicativo en la Transición política española – El Tratamiento informativo crítico y popular de la Transición española’ [The satirical magazine El Papus (1973–1987): Communicative counterpower in the Spanish political Transition – The critical and popular information treatment of the Spanish Transition] (PhD diss., Universidad de Valencia, 2014), 325. 8 Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, ‘Prólogo’, in Por Favor: Una historia de la transición, by Jaume Claret (Barcelona: Crítica, 2000), 6–13 (11). 9 Iván Tubau, El humor gráfico en la prensa del franquismo [Graphic humor in the press of the Franco regime] (Barcelona: Editorial Mitre, 1987), 257. 10 Gerardo Vilches, ‘La primera etapa de El Jueves: Un análisis de los primeros 26 números del semanario’ [The first stage of El Jueves: An analysis of the first 26 issues of the weekly], CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic 2 (2014): 137–158 (147). 11 Francesca Lladó, Los cómics de la transición: El boom del cómic adulto 1975–1984 (Barcelona: Glénat, 2001), 25.

40

Gerardo Vilches

as childhood publications and controlled by specific legislation.12 In contrast, the satirical magazines came under the general press legislation that also controlled newspapers and all magazines. The first two years of the Spanish Transition to democracy (1975–1977) were also the last in which Ley 14/1966 de Prensa e Imprenta [Law 14/1966 of Press and Printed Material] was in full effect. The law was the main contribution to this field – made by Manuel Fraga Iribarne, who had been Minister of Information and Tourism since 1962 – and superseded the former, outdated legislation, which had been approved in 1938. Despite Franco’s initial reluctance, pressures from both press and society became ‘overwhelming’ in the early 1960s, and Fraga started to prepare a new law. In 1964, he asked Pío Cabanillas, his assistant secretary at the time, to write a draft of the law, which was finally approved in the Cortes Generales two years later.13 Informally known as the ‘Ley Fraga’, this law introduced the abrogation of previous censorship as its main innovation, with the exception of war and emergency states (Article 3). It guaranteed freedom of speech for the press, although it was limited by some clauses contained in Article 2: el respeto a la verdad y a la moral; el acatamiento a la Ley de Principios del Movimiento Nacional y demás Leyes Fundamentales; las exigencias de la defensa Nacional, de la seguridad del Estado y del mantenimiento del orden público interior y la paz exterior; el debido respeto a la Instituciones y a las personas en la crítica de la acción política y administrativa; la independencia de los Tribunales, y la salvaguardia de la intimidad y del honor personal y familiar.14 [the respect for truth and morality; the observance of the Law of the Principles of the National Movement and other fundamental laws; the demands of national defence, state security and the keeping of internal public order and external peace; the respect owed to institutions and people in any criticism of political and administrative action; the independence of the law courts, and the safeguarding of personal and family honour].

The new press law was intended to show ‘an appearance of modernity’ but actually maintained the same limits to freedom of speech as those imposed by the 1938 law while changing the 12 Vicent Sanchis, Tebeos mutilados: La censura franquista contra Editorial Bruguera [Mutilated comics: Francoist censorship against Editorial Bruguera] (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2010). 13 Ignacio Fernández Sarasola, La legislación sobre historieta en España [The legislation on comics in Spain] (Seville: Asociación Cultural Tebeosfera Ediciones, 2014), 122. 14 ‘Ley 14/1966 de 18 de marzo, de Prensa e Imprenta’, Boletín Oficial del Estado 67 (19 March 1966), https://www.boe.es/buscar/act.php?id=BOE-A-1966-3501.



Satirical Panels against Censorship 41

‘regulatory system’.15 Under the former law, the censors had to approve every publication before being distributed. But publishers now had to take a risk and publish whatever they chose, and the administration punished them thereafter if it so decided. Under the appearance of a liberal reform, the new law kept the power to control the press. The application of punitive measures was left to the free discretion of the different authorities, so the degree of freedom for the Spanish press eventually, and almost exclusively, depended on the personal tolerance showed by each Minister of Information and Tourism.16 Moreover, a further arbitrary factor was thus introduced, because a statement such as ‘truth and morality’ could be – and was – subjectively interpreted by different judges. This point is reinforced by examining a judgement against El Papus in a 1975 judicial proceeding that was initiated against this magazine on several grounds. We can find a broad rationale for the judges’ interpretation of Article 2: Ha de reprobarse como contrario a la moral a todo aquello que propende al triunfo de las pasiones corporales sobre el espíritu y a la ofuscación de la inteligencia por la sensualidad, no debiendo olvidarse que la limitación de carácter moral establecida en el artículo 2.º de la Ley de Prensa no constituye un elemento restrictivo de aquel derecho fundamental y programático [la libertad de expresión].17 [Everything that leads to the triumph of base instinct over spirit and the obfuscation of intelligence by sensuality must be condemned as contrary to public morals. It cannot be forgotten that the moral constraint established in Article 2 of the Press Law does not constitute an element restrictive of that fundamental and programmatic right (freedom of speech).]

Article 69 of the Press Law sets out the following sanctions for editors or the publishing companies: En las infracciones leves: multa de 1.000 a 25.000 pesetas. En las graves: multa de 50.000 a 100.000 pesetas. En las muy graves: suspensión de las publicaciones ­periódicas hasta dos meses en los diarios; hasta cuatro meses en los 15 Ignacio Fernández Sarasola, La legislación sobre historieta en España (Seville: Asociación Cultural Tebeosfera Ediciones, 2014), 122. 16 Francisco Segado Boj, ‘Las puertas del campo: Censura y coacción informativa durante la transición, reflejadas en el humor gráfico de la prensa diaria (1974– 1977)’ [The doors of the field: Censorship and informative coercion during the Transition, reflected in the graphic humor of the daily press], Anàlisi 39 (2009): 17–34 (21). 17 S. 1-7-77; Cdos. 2º and 3º; Aranz. 3.295/77, in Pedro Crespo de Lara, La prensa en el banquillo (1966–1977) (Madrid: Aede Fundación, 1988), 127–128.

42

Gerardo Vilches s­ emanarios o publicaciones quincenales y hasta seis meses en las de menor frecuencia. Suspensión de las actividades de las Empresas editoriales definidas en el artículo 50 hasta tres meses o multa de 100.000 a 500.000 pesetas.18 [For minor violations: a fine of 1,000 to 25,000 pesetas. For serious violations: a fine of 50,000 to 100,000 pesetas. For very serious violations: suspension of publication of the periodical for four months in the case of weekly or biweekly publications. Suspension of the activities of the publishing companies defined in Article 50 during three months or fine of 100,000 to 500,000 pesetas.]

Dealing with an Arbitrary System Consequently, in order to avoid a fine or having their magazines closed down, publishers had to be careful with respect to content, applying some sort of self-censorship in order to prevent legal problems. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán – writer, journalist and founder of Por Favor – wrote: Por Favor ha vivido la época informativamente más difícil del franquismo [. . .]. Con la Ley de Prensa la cosa se complicó [. . .]. Pero el desmadre vino cuando los ministros aperturistas y no aperturistas se turnaban en un juego de bueno y malo que atontaba al profesional de la comunicación.19 [Por Favor has lived through the most difficult period of Francoism in terms of information (. . .). With the Press Law, things got worse (. . .). But the real disaster started when progressive and non-progressive ministers took turns in a good cop/bad cop game that ­stunned all media professionals].

In practical terms, the government’s aim was not to punish every infraction of the law but rather to have a tool that they could use any time they needed in order to control the progressive press that was appearing in those years: ‘Como cláusula de salvaguardia traía la ley un artículo 2.º estableciendo unos límites vaporosos seguramente con el fin de disparar los mecanismos sancionadores si la experiencia alcanzaba tonos preocupantes para el regimen’ [As a safeguard clause, the law included Article 2, which established certain blurred boundaries, in order to trigger the sanctioning mechanisms if the regime was troubled by the tone of the content].20 In 18 ‘Ley 14/1966 de 18 de marzo’. 19 Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, [no title], Por Favor 100 (31 May 1975), 12. 20 Antonio Pedrol Luis, ‘Prólogo’, in Crespo de Lara, La prensa en el banquillo, 9–11 (9).



Satirical Panels against Censorship 43

the case of satirical magazines, every issue contained something that the authorities could deem a punish­able offense, as confirmed by testimonies of some of the collaborators of El Papus: for instance, the cartoonist Jordi Amorós (Ja) maintains that public prosecutors chose a random issue, no matter what its contents were, and then started legal proceedings.21 Editor Carlos Navarro says: ‘La excusa es siempre la misma. Cogen unos números y te abren una especie de proceso [. . .]. [Las revistas atentaban] contra la moral pública. Algunas veces, era porque algunas frases no eran políticamente apropiadas’ [The pretext is always the same. They get some issues of the magazine and start a kind of trial (. . .). (Magazines were) against public morality. Sometimes, it was because some phrases were not politically appropriate].22 Even though the political orientation of all these magazines was against the Franco regime, most sanctions were because of some kind of infraction of Article 2 of the Press Law, as we will see – in particular, erotic content, strong language or a lack of respect to institutions like the Catholic Church. Some editors and collaborators of these magazines think the erotic content was often an excuse to punish the satirical press for its political criticism.23 However, given the absence of testimonies by censors or politicians, this point cannot be easily proved. During the tenure of Pío Cabanillas (January 1974 to March 1975), permissiveness increased.24 In fact, Cabanillas was dismissed on such grounds.25 Subsequent ministers – there were three more before the ministry’s reform in July 1977 – were stricter and applied the law in a more restrictive way, but it is important to underline that the law did not need any change for this to happen. We can find a better example in October 1976, when the administration, with Reguera Guajardo as minister, worried about the abundance of erotic content and brought up the possibility of permanently closing El Papus and Papillón (a soft erotic magazine, also published by Amaika). Xavier Echarri, director of both magazines, received a letter from the ministry in which he was warned about the closure. Finally, there was a meeting with various publishers, in which they reached a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ to remove nudity from covers, 26 as was confirmed in El Papus issue 127. 21 Ja, interview, 4 May 2016. 22 Carlos Navarro, interview, 1 March 2017. 23 José Ilario, interview, 4 May 2016; L’Avi, interview, 17 October 2016. 24 Francisco Segado Boj, ‘Las puertas del campo’, 22. 25 Xavier Casals, La transición española: El voto ignorado de las armas [The Spanish Transition: The ignored vote of weapons] (Barcelona: Pasado y presente, 2016), 72. 26 Iranzo, ‘La revista satírica El Papus’, 335.

44

Gerardo Vilches

Consequently, as we can see, certain negotiations were possible before punitive measures were taken, at least in cases where there were good relationships between publishers and public servants. There was a certain degree of communication with the censors, in the context of an arbitrary system whose aim never was systematic enforcement of the law. The best example of these negotiations was the experience of José Ilario, the editor of Por Favor and El Jueves, as well as magazines like Bocaccio and Interviú, the best-selling Spanish magazine of the Transition and after. Ilario explains that there was a censor exclusively dedi­cated to watch out for Bocaccio, which contained erotic photographs, ‘con el que llegamos a tener una excelente relación’ [with whom we managed to have a great relationship]. Furthermore, Ilario states: Yo iba a Madrid una vez al mes y el día antes [de la reunión] lo invitaba a una discoteca en Madrid [. . .] Yo lo invitaba a una copa, yo le ponía fotos más fuertes, para que al día siguiente, cuando yo iba con las fotos, las encontrara más suaves. [I went to Madrid once a month and the day before [the meeting] I invited the censor to a disco in Madrid (. . .). I bought him drinks and showed him photos that were more explicit, so the day after, when I showed him the magazine, its photos seemed milder to him].

This sort of picaresca [subterfuge] was relatively common, and sometimes the sanction of one magazine was used to gain some advantage for others. Ilario explains that he agreed to cancel Bocaccio in 1973, but, in exchange, he got licences for three new magazines, Por Favor among them. Some time later, he secured more tolerance for Interviú by accepting the cancellation of a minor erotic magazine, Emmanuelle.27 On some occasions, stronger sanctions were applied as a result of political pressure. In the case of El Papus, Carlos Navarro explains that its first four-month closure was motivated by a complaint made by ­Franco’s wife, Carmen Polo, in 1974. According to Navarro’s version, she asked the right-wing journalist Emilio Romero for a report that she then presented to the Council of Ministers, arguing that El Papus ‘could not be tolerated’. Minister of Information and Tourism C ­ abanillas, ensured that the closure was not permanent.28 Another significant example is the first four-month suspension of Por Favor in 1974; the pretext was various content that included, among other kinds, allusions to sexuality in more than ten issues 27 José Ilario, interview, 4 May 2016. 28 Carlos Navarro, interview, 1 March 2017.



Satirical Panels against Censorship 45

since the beginning of the magazine.29 But for José Ilario, the real reason was because ‘se puso sobre la mesa dar un escarmiento. Y el escarmiento era o Cambio 16 o Por Favor. Y les pareció más cómodo Por Favor, que estaba en Barcelona’ [they brought up the need of making a public example, and the options were Cambio 16 or Por Favor. And Por Favor, which was in Barcelona, seemed more convenient to them].30 Years later, the journalists Ramoneda and Martí Gómez interviewed Cabanillas in Por Favor, in which Cabanillas justified his decision: PÍO CABANILLAS: El Por Favor se cerró después de varios avisos. Pienso que había una orientación que abarataba el contenido literario de la prensa. Era una mezcla de mal gusto: palabras malsonantes, palabras novedosas pero de un castellano excesivamente contundente y bajo, lo que daba un contenido literario e informativo que no debía fomentarse. [. . .] Este es el problema, ¿comprende? Ustedes hacían una prensa de las menciones que hay en los cuartos de baño no muy selectos.31 [PÍO CABANILLAS: Por Favor was closed after various warnings. I think that it had an orientation that devalued the literary content of the press. It consisted of a medley of bad taste ingredients: swear words, inventive but excessively blunt and vulgar words, which resulted in a literary and informational content that it was not acceptable to promote. (. . .) This is the problem; do you see what I mean? You were making journalism out of the words written on the walls of not very selective toilets.]

This harsh opinion, coming from one of the most liberal ministers, illustrates to perfection the general view of the satirical press held by the regime. Another important pretext for the sanctions was eroticism. The social and media phenomenon known as Destape, consisting of the use of naked female bodies in films and magazines, was widespread in the 1970s. In the press, Destape started in magazines like Bocaccio and Flashmen, but it appeared soon enough in satirical publications as a strong pitch for better sales. El Papus was frequently fined for the abusive use of female nudes. In fact, the first case brought against it concerned the magazine’s third issue, which had a bikini-clad girl on its cover. Eroticism was a pitch for readers that guaranteed sales and allowed collaborators to 29 Archivo General de la Administración [Administration General Archive] AGA (03)062 71/12351 EXP.45 and AGA (03)062 71/12352 EXP.48. 30 José Ilario, interview, 4 May 2016. 31 Josep Ramoneda and Martí Gómez, [no title], Por Favor 135 (31 January 1977), 23–25.

46

Gerardo Vilches

Illustration 2.1. El Papus 31 (18 May 1974), cover.

include political criticism in the magazines.32 Even though there were also sanctions for political reasons, Carlos Navarro argues that the Destape was an excuse to attack the magazines on some occasions. But, for him, erotic photos were a cover for political criticism during the first years of El Papus.33 When resolutions are checked today, it is quite surprising to read how detailed the description of the photos could be. For instance, Antoni Guiral reproduced part of the resolution for El Papus 31 (18 May 1974), on whose cover was a model with a miniskirt and her back turned (Illustration 2.1): Aparece en la portada primera una fotografía de mujer, tomada en un ángulo de abajo arriba, de espaldas, de forma que con la escasa minifalda que viste, queda incluida de forma bien visible en la fotografía la parte alta de los muslos, y adivinándose también la entrepierna.34 32 Tom Roca, interview, 23 January 2017. 33 Carlos Navarro, interview, 1 March 2017. 34 Reproduced in Antoni Guiral, ‘Sor Angustias, una monja diferente’ [Sor Angustias, a different nun], Antología poética de El Papus (Barcelona: ECC, 2014), 7–14 (12).



Satirical Panels against Censorship 47 [A photo of a woman appears on the front cover, shot from a low angle, from behind, so that the scanty miniskirt that she is wearing leaves the upper part of her thighs clearly visible in the photo, almost revealing her crotch.]

Mockery of the Catholic religion is the last of the main pretexts for the punishment of the satirical press. While Article 2 of the Press Law was being enforced, only a few anticlerical jokes were featured. But El Papus went further, with its covers about Easter and, after the derogation of Article 2 in April 1977, with a character created by Ja, ‘Sor Angustias de la Cruz’, a nun who works in a nursing home. She is violent, uses bad language and treats elderly people with extreme cruelty. This comic strip was deliberately blasphemous and mocked nuns as well as the Catholic Church, bringing El Papus into conflict with the administration. Ja was prosecuted eighty times because of this strip, which was finally cancelled in issue 268 (7 July 1978) because of pressure from the government. This was the decision of the publisher, Carlos Navarro, in order to avoid ‘daily fights with the ministry’.35 Even in 1984, José Luis Martín was prosecuted because of his book La Biblia contada a los pasotas [The Bible as told to non-believers].36

Analysing the Archives In the process of seeking information about these judicial proceedings, I visited various archives, but most of the documents are sadly not yet available because of Spanish legislation which keeps certain kinds of information classified for fifty years. Moreover, according to their former publishers, Por Favor, El Papus and El Jueves do not maintain any archives where investigators can search for legal documents. In contrast, Butifarra! editor Alfonso López has kept all the documents and a mail archive of the magazine; these documents are on deposit in the Archivo Histórico de Barcelona [Historical Archive of Barcelona]. But the main source of documentation for this article is the Archivo General de la Administración [General Archive of the Administration] (AGA), where various administrative proceedings relating to satirical magazines can be found. However, only administrative documentation, and nothing related to legal proceedings, is kept in the AGA. According to Guiral, El 35 Iranzo, ‘La revista satírica El Papus’, 380. 36 Jesús González, ‘El dibujante José Luis Martín, juzgado por ultraje a la religión’ [The cartoonist José Luis Martín, judged by outrage to religion], El País (17 January 1984), https://elpais.com/diario/1984/01/17/sociedad/443142011_850215. html.

48

Gerardo Vilches

Illustration 2.2. Distribution of the administrative causes. Cases against satirical magazines (Archivo General de la Administración 1973–1977).

Papus went through 157 legal hearings up to 1978.37 By way of comparison, El Jueves explained in issue 100 that the magazine had been taken to court one hundred times up to then.38 Never­ theless, it is interesting to analyse AGA files, because they show a general, if partial, outlook, which nevertheless is representative enough. There are twenty-seven cases against satirical magazines from 1973 to 1977; nine of them are related to El Papus, the most prosecuted magazine in those years. Article 2 of the Press Law was the cause of every administrative proceeding consulted, although more than one article was taken into consideration in two cases; however, as this article covered several different areas, each proceeding usually specifies which was the concrete cause: lack of respect for institutions and people, for morality or for state security. Illustration 2.2 shows the distribution of the twenty-five different causes I found, with the corresponding percentage. Lack of respect for morality, especially the display of the female body and the use of strong language, was the cause of most of the open proceedings consulted. However, when we analyse the issues that were sanctioned, and as the cartoonists and publishers have said, there were clearly no substantial differences with other 37 Guiral, ‘Sor Angustias, una monja diferente’, 12. 38 José Luis Erviti, ‘Editorial’, El Jueves 100 (25 April 1979), 3. It is not clear if this data included both administrative and judicial proceedings.



Satirical Panels against Censorship 49

Illustration 2.3. Final resolutions of the causes. Cases against satirical magazines (Archivo General de la Administración 1973–1977).

issues of the same magazine. Most often, the proceedings went no further, but even then, it had a warning effect; sometimes this was made explicit in the judgement. Illustration 2.3 summarises the final resolutions of the proceeding kept in the AGA. There was a further legal sanction: the secuestro editorial. This was a legal procedure that consisted of removing all the copies of a specific issue from the sale points and from the publishers’ offices. It was applied to many issues of every satirical magazine during the Transition, but it was fairly ineffective because, when the measure was taken, the issue had already been on sale for at least two days. Sometimes a new issue had been released when the secuestro of the previous one was declared. José Ilario explains that every issue of Emmanuelle was removed, but the order always came the following week, so he was able to publish twenty-six issues before the administration declared the definitive closure of the magazine.39 El Papus and Por Favor were often affected by the sanction; in case of the latter, and counting only up to Franco’s death as an example, five issues of Por Favor were removed because of some interviews with politicians from the democratic opposition, among other ­reasons (Illustration 2.4). José Luis Martín argues that when El Jueves had its first secuestro, issue 8 (8 July 1977), the police arrived at its o ­ ffices to seize the issue, but there were only two copies left.40 39 José Ilario, interview, 4 May 2016. 40 José Luis Martín, interview, 18 October 2016.

50

Gerardo Vilches

Illustration 2.4. El Perich, Por Favor 72 (17 November 1975), 4. The artist shows a news anchor surprised because Por Favor had not been seized that week.

Magazines usually responded to sanctions with a mixture of defiance and humour. El Papus issue 113, the last before the second closure, featured an illustration of Minister Fraga himself closing El Papus’s office (Illustration 2.5).41 The magazine sometimes responded to the sanctions with further provocation. For instance, the first issue after the closure in 1976 stated on its cover: ‘Ahora iremos con más ojo’ [Now we’ll keep an eye out], with a photograph of a fully naked woman with a pair of eyes painted on her buttocks. 41 García Lorente, ‘The Illustrated Se Lo Juro News’, El Papus 113 (27 March 1976), 8.



Satirical Panels against Censorship 51

Illustration 2.5. García Lorente, ‘The Illustrated Se Lo Juro News’, El Papus 113 (27 March 1976), 8.

Por Favor issue 18 (4 November 1974) did something similar after the first four-month closure: a photo of battered members of the staffing team accompanied the headline, ‘Volvemos dispuestos a dar la cara’ [We come back ready to face the music]. As a consequence, that issue was seized (Illustration 2.6). The most serious legal consequences for collaborators of satiri­ cal magazines could follow a court martial. The cartoonist ­Antonio ­Fraguas (Forges) faced a court martial in 1977, but the charge was dropped because of lack of evidence.42 El Papus went through three court martials. Two of them related to consecutive issues, 132 (27 November 1976) and 133 (4 December 1976), for mocking the army and the extreme right.43 The army had not come in for much criti­cism in the pages of the satirical press until that point: Hermano Lobo sometimes broached the topic of the army, but in 42 ‘Forges: “La gente pega mis viñetas en la nevera” (RTVE, 6 August 2014), http:// www.rtve.es/rtve/20140806/forges-gente-pega-vinetas-nevera/987664.shtml. 43 Iranzo, ‘La revista satírica El Papus’, 337.

52

Gerardo Vilches

Illustration 2.6. Por Favor 18 (25 October 1974), cover.



Satirical Panels against Censorship 53

generic panels without satirical intention.44 In the case of Por Favor, only six issues had army-related content until the first democratic elections in June 1977, after which the proportion increased.45 El Papus paid for its audacity with a penalty of three months’ house arrest for Carlos Navarro and three months’ suspended sentence for the cartoonists Adolfo Usero, Ventura and Óscar Nebreda, who appeared in disguise as soldiers on the covers.46 In 1977, a comic strip by Ja – in which the cartoonist strongly criticised the army, the police and Minister of the Interior Rodolfo Martín Villa – was the pretext for the announcement of a third court martial for Navarro and Ja, but, according to Iranzo, this never took place.47

In the Courts Thanks to testimonies and magazine content, we know to some extent how the judgements affected the journalists and cartoonists in their daily routine. The volume of judicial proceedings was so high that those in charge of these magazines went as far as to say they had to go to court almost every week.48 For example, Xavier Echarri had to attend four or five trials per week, and his lawyer used to pass by the court to check the new proceedings against the magazine without waiting for the judicial notification by mail. The publishers usually paid for the lawyers and offered total support to both collaborators and staff. According to José Luis Martín and Ja, constant visits to court caused a desensitising effect: they got used to it and incorporated it to their professional routines, so they were not afraid of publishing punishable material. Referring to El Papus, José Luis Martín has said: ‘Lo que ellos hacían no se podía hacer, simplemente. Para ellos, ir a los juzgados todas las semanas era la cosa más natural del mundo’ [What they did could not be done. For them, going to court every week was a natural 44 Dolors Palau Sampio, ‘Aullidos para un nuevo tiempo: Iglesia, ejército y monarquía en la última época de Hermano Lobo’ [Howls for a new time: Church, army and monarchy in the last era of Hermano Labo], in El humor frente al poder: Prensa humorística, cultura política y poderes fácticos en España (1927–1987) [Humor in front of the power: Humorous press, political culture and de facto powers in Spain], ed. Enrique Bordería Ortiz, Francesca Martínez Gallego and Josep L. Gómez Mompart (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2015), 119–130 (126). 45 Josep Lluís Gómez Mompart, ‘Leve crítica a la monarquía, el ejército y la iglesia en el periodismo satírico de Por Favor (1974–1978)’ [Mild criticism of the monarchy, army and church in satirical journalism of Por Favor], in Ortiz et al., El humor frente al poder, 105–118 (108). 46 Iranzo, ‘La revista satírica El Papus’, 338. 47 Ibid., 349. 48 José Luis Martín, interview, 18 October 2016.

54

Gerardo Vilches

thing]. Even when the cartoonists were sentenced and while on a suspended sentence, lawyers took care of everything so that the cartoonists did not have to go to court once a fortnight.49 The authors sometimes took advantage of the judge’s lack of knowledge about how comics are produced. For example, when the cartoonists Tom Roca and Carlos Romeu started the second period of Mata Ratos in 1974 with Garbo Editorial, they had legal proceedings every week. To keep the magazine going, they took turns to declare each of them the sole editor of the whole issue, so while one of them went to court, the other could produce that week’s issue.50 Another example took place before the abolition of Article 2; Butifarra! went through a serious court case because of an issue dedicated to the Catholic Church in 1978, ‘Iglesia S.A.’ According to the record preserved in the Archivo Histórico de Barcelona, the magazine’s director, Iván Tubau, was taken to court on 28 September for mocking the Church: Por delito contra la Religión Católica, apareciendo en dicha revista un dibujo irreverente en su portada que simula lanzando la Sagrada Hostia por un ministro eclesiástico, con el báculo, hacia la boca de una persona, en caricatura grotesca; y que en la contraportada aparece una parodia haciendo escarnio de la Santísima Virgen y el misterio de la Concepción, en forma de historieta; siguiendo un conjunto de historietas todas ellas tendentes a hacer escarnio de la Iglesia Católica, criticando soezmente sus ritos y creencias bajo el pretexto de contar en forma de historieta la evolución de las creencias religiosas.51 [Because of a crime against the Catholic religion, an irreverent drawing having appeared on the cover of that magazine in which a cleric throws the sacred host into the mouth of a person with his crosier, in a grotesque cari­cature of the ritual. On the back cover there is a parody, mocking the Holy Virgin and the mystery of immaculate conception, in the form of a comic strip; followed by a group of comic strips mocking the Catholic Church, criticising its rites and beliefs with vile words under the pretext of narrating the evolution of religious beliefs in the form of a comic strip.]

According to the Press Law, every magazine needed to have an accredited journalist as its director of publication, but this journalist usually had nothing to do with the contents or journalistic decisions, as was the case of Tubau. However, he still had legal 49 Ibid. 50 Carlos Romeu, Ahora que aún me acuerdo de todo (o casi). . . [Now that I still remember everything (or almost). . .] (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2012), 70. 51 Archivo Histórico de Barcelona, Carpeta Equip Butifarra! 6, 2.ª época/kioscos, demandes, judicis (1978/1982), C3734209.



Satirical Panels against Censorship 55

responsibility for the contents, but thanks to the practice of leaving the comic strips in Butifarra! unsigned, Alfonso López and the rest of the cartoonists could convince the judge that every strip was produced by the entire staff: ‘¡Imagínate! ¿Cómo íbamos a hacer entre los diez o doce una historieta? [. . .] El juez se vio en la situación de tener que procesar y meter a diez, doce personas. Decidió sobreseerlo. Y salvamos al director’ [Can you imagine! How could ten or twelve people produce the same comic strip? (. . .) The judge found himself in a situation in which he would have had to prosecute ten or twelve people. So, he decided to dismiss the case. And we saved the director].52 In general terms, all cartoonists felt that the legal procedures made no sense. Following lawyers’ instructions, they always pleaded animus iocandi in their defence.53 Sometimes they were asked about the hidden meaning of phrases and drawings that actually had no political intention or were simple absurd jokes,54 but they generally realised that the legislation was out of date and far removed from the sensitivity of most Spanish citizens at the time. Out of a mixture of bravery and insouciance, cartoonists and journalists kept publishing content that they knew would lead them to court, but the arbitrary application of the Press Law made them think that they would be taken to court anyway. In addition, the judges’ attitude could be surprising: many cartoonists, like Ja, L’Avi and Kim, recounted how judges sometimes asked them for drawings and signings after the judgements. In Ja’s opinion, many of them were progressive people who did their job reluctantly.55 Carlos Romeu says he was cited because a judge had twenty-seven case files related to him; when Romeu went into the judge’s office, he threw all the files away and had a coffee with the cartoonist.56 Even if the cartoonists are overstating their memories, it seems clear that legislation was lagging behind public morals. In addition, it should be noted that none of those cartoonists were put into jail on grounds of morality. They calculated that a certain risk existed but that the punishment would be financial in 52 Alfonso López, interview, 23 January 2017. 53 L’Avi humorously explains how El Papus’s lawyer denied that its cartoonist had any political motivation, arguing that they were too dumb to know about politics. L’Avi, interview, 17 October 2016. 54 Tom Roca recounts a case in which a judge asked insistently what he meant with the phrase ‘Mire, mire qué silla, firmado: los de Sevilla’ [Look, look at this chair, signed: the ones from Seville]; this was just a silly rhyme used to illustrate a photograph of a naked model sitting on a luxurious chair, in Mata Ratos. Tom Roca, interview, 23 January 2016. 55 Ja, interview, 4 May 2016. 56 Carlos Romeu, interview, 18 October 2016.

56

Gerardo Vilches

most of the cases. Tom Roca asserts: ‘Las editoriales fueron muy inteligentes, porque todo eran juicios de faltas, y los juicios de faltas normalmente acababan con una multa de 4.500 pesetas, y ya está [. . .], le salía a cuenta pagar la multa, pagar abogados, y sanseacabó’ [The publishers played smart. They knew that most of the time the sentence would only be faltas (a minor sentence that is only administrative, not penal), and that usually implied a fine of no more than 4,500 pesetas (. . .). They could afford to pay for fines and lawyers, and that’s all].57 For cartoonists and journalists, the sentences were usually less than two years: under the terms of Spanish law, they did not go to prison, but the sentence was suspended; if someone was sentenced while already on a suspended sentence, then they had to complete the sentence. But then, as José Luis Martín explains,58 the second sentence could be appealed against. By delaying the final sentence, they could probably avoid prison. Ja explains how he was sentenced to three years of prison but that, thanks to an amnesty, he never served them.59

Conclusions In 1978, with the closure of Por Favor, only two major satirical magazines were still being published: El Papus and El Jueves. Although legislative pressures continued, the worst stage had ended with the elimination of Article 2 of the Press Law in 1977. The function of that coercive system, in relation to the satirical press, was to control its contents in a new and more open social and political context: the last years of Francoism and the first years of the Transition. The administration tried to control these magazines with sanctions that were mainly focused on moral issues, although, according to some of their editors and contributors, their political orientation and criticism of the authorities were also motives for prosecution. However, financial sanctions had little effect on these magazines when big corporations like Grupo Zeta and Grupo Planeta bought them because of their success. The magazines that did not survive those years, except for Mata Ratos, which was closed by the ministry, folded because of the loss of readers. The consolidation of democracy meant that the readership looked elsewhere, in other media, for political and social criticism. However, these satirical magazines managed to connect with certain parts of society which looked forward to freedom in a 57 Tom Roca, interview, 23 January 2017. 58 José Luis Martín, interview, 18 October 2016. 59 Guiral, ‘Sor Angustias’, 14.



Satirical Panels against Censorship 57

changeable context. They also offered a different view of the Transition, one that was irreverent and iconoclastic, and the audacity of their contributors played a necessary role in that period, exposing both social and political issues. They knew it was a matter of time before real press freedom arrived. As José Luis Martín says: ‘Este era un partido que sabíamos que íbamos a ganar’ [We knew this was a match that we were going to win].60

Gerardo Vilches has a PhD degree from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia Contemporary History Program and has completed a doctoral thesis on the politics of the Spanish Transition in the satirical press. He also teaches social sciences at Universidad Europea and writes in various media about comics. He wrote Breve historia del cómic (Nowtilus, 2014) and El Guión de cómic (Diminuta, 2016) and has collaborated on several edited collections. He has also participated in conferences on comics and history. He co-directs CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic, an online comics journal.

60 José Luis Martín, interview, 18 October 2016.

Chapter 3

Tintin in the Movida madrileña Gender and Sexuality in the Punk Comic Book Zine Scene Louie Dean Valencia-García

A New New Wave: The Zine and Comics Scene in Spain In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Madrid was in the throes of a cultural and political change that upended the far-right authoritarian dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, who had ruled Spain from the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 until his death in 1975. In a country that had actively promoted nationalism and militarism, positioned women below men and arrested and killed queer people, those who did not conform to Francoist norms of gender and sexuality (the anti-­authoritarian youth culture that arose in the years leading up to Franco’s death) radically contrasted with the fascistic ideology of National Catholicism of the regime by promoting pluralism as Spain transitioned to d ­ emocracy.1 As the 1 When I use ‘queer’, a term that was not used in Spain the 1970s, I am referring, generally, to people who were located outside of (hetero)normative practices of gender expression and/or sexuality. In the 1920s, the scientist and physician Gregorio Marañon used ‘intersex’ to describe sexualities and genders that existed



Tintin in the Movida madrileña

59

Spanish historian Pamela Beth Radcliff argues, ‘One of the best places to investigate the place of gender in Spain’s emergent democratic culture is in the political press of the transition’. For Radcliff, print culture of the transition ‘was a central building block of the revived public sphere, which began to take shape in the mid 1970s as censorship declined and the circulation of information reached a critical “take-off” point’.2 Another place we might look is the largely unregulated Spanish fanzine culture of the 1970s and early 1980s, which one might argue was part of the unofficial political print culture.3 In the first issue of La liviandad del imperdible [The lightness of a safety pin] (Illustration 3.1), the now legendary Madrid fanzine dedicated to anarchism, punk and comics, dated October 1977, the authors, composed of a collective that included Olvido Gara Jova (b. 1963), who would become the legendary Spanish New Wave artist known as Alaska, published an essay titled ‘Libertad para la mujer española: Yaaaa?’ [Liberty for the Spanish woman: Nowwww?]. The full-page text claimed that ‘el superhombre de [Nietzsche] es una mujer’ [Nietzsche’s superman is a woman] and ‘la mujer es superior al hombre, porque es menos animal’ [women are superior to men, because they are less animalistic]. Along with such fervent claims that would have been quite powerful in the era, between male and female. See Víctor Mora Gaspar, Al margen de la naturaleza: La persecución de la homo­s exualidad durante El Franquismo – Leyes, terapias y condenas [At the margin of nature: The persecution of homosexuality during the Franco era – Laws, therapies and condemnations] (Barcelona: Debate, 2016), 25. In the 1960s, the Francoist judge Antonio Sabter Tomás used ‘homosexual’ to describe non-normative genders and sexualities, comparing them to ‘­deviants’, ‘vagabonds’ and ‘criminals’. See Antonio Sabater Tomás, Gamberros, homo­ sexuals, vagos y maleantes: Estudio jurídico-sociológico [Hooligans, homosexuals, vagabonds and crooks: Legal-sociological study] (Barcelona: Editorial Hispano Europea, 1962). Because of these problematic usages and associations with ‘homo­sexual’ and ‘intersexed’, I am opting for ‘queer’. In the 1970s, the Spanish writer Eduardo Haro Ibars (b. 1948) used the Anglophone ‘gay’ in the title of his polemic 1975 work to describe musicians who broke from sexual taboos of the time. See Eduardo Haro Ibars, Gay Rock (Madrid: Ediciones Júcar, 1975). While Spaniards used ‘gay’ in that decade, the term limits potential discourse in that it can be understood as erasing other non-normative constructions of gender and sexuality. Additionally, I use ‘fascistic’ instead of ‘fascist’ to delineate the differences between fascism before the Second World War and after while still acknowledging that S ­ panish culture certainly was infused with fascist (or fascistic) ideology throughout the ­Francoist dictatorship. 2 Pamela Beth Radcliff, ‘Imagining Female Citizenship in the “New Spain”: Gendering the Democratic Transition, 1975–1978’, Gender and History 13, no. 3 (2001): 498–523 (503). 3 Typically, fanzines are affordable, mechanically produced pamphlets/librettos produced by dedicated fans of music, science fiction, film, comics and the like. These zines are both produced individually and collaboratively.

60

Louie Dean Valencia-García

Illustration 3.1. La liviandad del imperdible 1 (October 1977). La liviandad del imperdible became a referential fanzine in Madrid in the 1970s, with many of the contributors going on to be important figures of the Spanish New Wave movement, the Movida madrileña. The zine, which featured numerous comics, was explicitly anarchist, anti-fascist, punk and feminist.



Tintin in the Movida madrileña

61

the article also defended women’s right to bisexuality and explicitly took a hard line in favour of feminism.4 These zines were certainly political and a space where teenage girls, like Alaska, could make their voices heard. By looking at youth-­produced material of the period, often crudely made comic fanzines in particular,5 a democratising and pluralistic medium which came to popularity in the last embers of the dictatorship during the transition to the current Spanish democracy, we can gain insight into the ways in which young Spaniards negotiated gender and sexuality during the period, and better understand the underlying tensions that belied their sexual and political liberation. To show this, I will first establish a brief history and theoretical framework of comic fanzines as an agent of pluralism in Spain and then interrogate noteworthy works from Madrid’s comic-­fanzine culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s to argue that those zines acted to resuscitate Spain’s public sphere, though not always unproblematically, focusing on specific representations of gender and sexuality within those comics.

Madrid’s Fanzine and Comic Culture In the aftermath of societal and youth rebellion of the 1960s, both in Spain and abroad, a new youth culture arose in the 1970s that celebrated frikis and punkis (freaks and punks) who did not conform to normative constructions of Spanishness under Franco, which included a strict nationalism, reverence for Catholicism and obedience to patriarchy.6 Young Spanish comic readers of the time consumed everything from American Superman comics to homegrown tebeos such as Capitán Trueno (a nationalistic sort of errant knight character) to The Adventures of Tintin series by the Belgian 4 Olvido Gara Jova, ‘Libertad para la mujer española: Yaaaa?’ La liviandad del imper­dible 1 (October 1977), 12. All translations in this chapter are my own unless otherwise indicated. 5 When I use ‘comic fanzine’, I intend to include a variety of forms such as (1) fanzines made exclusively of or for comics; (2) comics that are included in fanzines that are composed of a multitude of content; and (3) a more general aesthetic inspired by comics that intersects with underground and alternative zine publications (e.g. the inclusion of speech bubbles, Ben-Day dots, etc.). 6 These ideals were displayed even in primary school textbooks that were approved by government censors, such as Enciclopedia de la enseñanza primaria: Grado infantil [Encyclopedia of primary education: Kindergarden grade] (Madrid: Compañía Biblio­gráfica Española, 1953), 53–61. I have written more extensively about these normative National Catholic ideologies in Louie Dean Valencia-García, Anti­a uthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain: Clashing with Fascism (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), chap. 2.

62

Louie Dean Valencia-García

artist-writer Hergé.7 More mature readers imbibed the work of Spain Rodriguez, Art Spiegelman, Robert Crumb and other prominent creators from the New York underground. Initially gaining ground in Barcelona, a vibrant underground comic book scene emerged in the early 1970s across Spain, inspired in part by parallel scenes in places such as London, New York and Paris. These scenes often overlapped with ‘underground’ countercultures such as the hippies of the 1960s and the punks of the 1970s. In Madrid, the underground youth culture of the period can be understood in three distinct but intersecting phases: (1) el Rrollo, the earliest phase, which drew its inspiration from the hippie-­ inspired Barcelona underground culture beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s; (2) la nueva ola española (Spanish New Wave), an appellation that gained prominence in Madrid in the late 1970s, inspired by both the French New Wave and ‘new wave music’ found in Anglophone states such as the United States and the United Kingdom; and (3) the Movida madrileña, a transgressive pop/punk scene that celebrated partying, sex, drugs, comics and rock and came to epitomise the rejection of Francoist ideas in the early years of the Spanish democracy in the early 1980s. Because of new affordable consumer technology that emerged after the Second World War (e.g. personal film cameras, sound recording devices, typewriters, photocopying machines), young people across Europe could more easily produce their own homemade publications and recordings than ever before. These technologies allowed new segments of the youth population to find a voice – particularly girls, women, migrants, and working-class and queer people – who might not have otherwise had the cultural capital to enter elite circles or financial means to acquire expensive equipment. In cinema, this was seen in the work of the likes of Agnès Varda, Marguerite Duras and Jacques Demy of the French New Wave. In London and New York, the quick rise of punk and new wave music was facilitated by new recording technologies – however crude – seen in the early work of Patti Smith, the Clash, the Ramones and Blondie. In Spain, this affordable technology not only gave young people a way to make their own publications but also allowed them to more easily evade the regime’s strict censorship process which required submission and approval by the state.8 7 For a breakdown of many of the most popular comics in Spain in the mid-1960s according to government surveys, see Alfonso Alvarez Villar, ‘Encuesta entre los niños y adolescentes’ [Survey among children and adolescents], Revista española de la opinión pública 2 (1965): 212. Tintin au Congo was first published in Spain as Hergé, Tintin en el Congo (Barcelona: Editorial Juventud, 1968). 8 See Valencia-García, Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture, chaps. 6–7.



Tintin in the Movida madrileña

63

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, young people internationally began to use mimeograph and photocopying technology to produce cheap ‘fanzines’ in tribute to the emergent youth culture (dedicated to bands, concerts, celebrities, comics, etc.). Fanzines, as the Anglophone name indicates, were ‘fan magazines’ that originated outside of Spain. These ‘zines’ allowed communities of young people to create printed publications that facilitated them to see themselves as part of a larger ‘imagined community’ – to borrow from Benedict Anderson – of partici­pants who held similar views on sexuality, shared aesthetic styles and produced and consumed related music, film, television, and comics.9 As Kate Eichhorn points out, zines had their origins in the 1930s but did not explode until the 1970s; she describes the copy machine as the ‘Trojan horse’ of the punk movement.10 More or less contemporary with the emergence of the form’s mass popularity in the United States and United Kingdom, the first mention of ‘fanzines’ in A.B.C., the news­paper of record in Franco’s Spain, occurred in February 1969, referencing the publication of ¡Bang! Fanzine de los tebeos españoles, a fanzine dedicated exclusively to Spanish comics that defined its medium as follows: ‘Según los expertos, un Fanzine viene a ser el equivalente de publicación especializada, periódica, confeccionada y editada a multi­copista, sin ánimo lucrativo y para un público minoritario, especialmente aficionado o interesado en el tema objeto del fanzine.’ [According to experts, the Fanzine has come to be the equivalent of a specialised publication, an irregular publication, confected and edited, photocopied, without the desire for profit, for a small audience, especially aficionados or those interested in the theme of the fanzine.] ¡Bang! was published by ­A ntonio Martín, an academic and frequent critic of foreign comics, who wrote regularly on comics in Spain for the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science. So esteemed was Martín that Roberto ­Saladrigas, the author of the A.B.C. article, believed the fanzine ‘debe inspirar el máximo respeto’ [should inspire maximum respect’].11 Compared to the North American and even British contexts, where zines and comics rarely were afforded such veneration, the Spanish case demonstrated a fundamental difference in perception of the medium. While not all comic fanzines were given such respect, an early precedent indicated that zines and comics could 9 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006). 10 Kate Eichhorn, Adjusted Margin: Xerography, Art, and Activism in the Late Twenti­ eth Century (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016), 105.2016 11 Roberto Saladrigas, ‘¡Bang! Fanzine de los tebeos españoles’, A.B.C. (Madrid), 21 February 1969.

64

Louie Dean Valencia-García

be legitimated. However, it should be noted that Martín went to extra effort to present his fanzine more professionally, retitling the publication BANG! Cuadernos de información y estudio sobre la historieta [BANG! Journal for information and study of comics] by the fourth issue. Beginning with that issue, the format resembled the Spanish youth-oriented political journals of the period, such as Cuadernos para el diálogo, more so than what became a more ‘punk’ aesthetic found in later fanzines of the 1970s. The revamped iteration of BANG! used a mid-century, minimalist, clean aesthetic that was professionally printed using a cardstock cover, sometimes in two colours, usually on affordable black-and-white paper. However, in keeping with the do-it-yourself aesthetic, BANG! also regularly published BANG! Boletín informativo, which was sent monthly to subscribers. The bulletin certainly closely resembled the more familiar photocopied zine, stapled together on the top left corner, using cheap paper and text written with a typewriter. In a sense, Martín’s project struggled between gaining legitimacy as a journal for scholars of comics and reaching an audience of ‘fanatics’ who yearned for more information about comics. Importantly, his use of hybrid formats recognised the diversity of readers of comics he was trying to reach: academic and non-academic. Cheaply produced comics were a prominent feature of Barcelona’s underground culture – most popularly seen in the early work of artists such as Nazario Luque, who, as part of a Barcelona-based collective of comic artists, self-published, amongst others, the anthology El Rrollo enmascarado (1973) – the first major publication of El Rrollo – and La piraña divina (1975). These works were held to a slightly higher production standard than most comic zines. Taking work to a professional printer meant it was likely to be submitted for ‘voluntarily’ review by censors as part of the process of legally depositing their work with the government (a remnant of F ­ ranco’s fascist bureaucratic apparatus.) Certainly, any printer who was brought questionable material for printing would have suggested submission for voluntary review – for their own sake as much as the client. One reason people would have volunteered to submit their work for censorship was the possibility of serious reper­c ussions under the dictatorship for material that was too transgressive. In fact, Nazario was charged in court with ‘public scandal’ and ‘immorality’ for ‘depraved’ images and scatological references in the work.12

12 See the censor report Archivo General de la Administración, Expediente 3200/75.



Tintin in the Movida madrileña

65

While Nazario’s comics were often printed on finer paper than most zines, their work represented two zine-like qualities: (1) ­affordably produced and (2) made without any real prospect of commercial reward. The creators of El Rrollo enmascarado even released copyright for ‘total or partial reproduction of the comic’ – ref lec­tive of an ethos common amongst zine makers.13 Even though many of the comics Nazario produced were often taken to a printer and professionally set, they were also later photocopied in black and white (pirated) after the first print runs – effectively transformed into comic zines.14 By 1977, pirated photo­copies of La piraña divina had even made their way to the Netherlands, published by the Inter­national Free Press. In Madrid, La Banda de Moebius – a small publisher of anthologies, comics, poems, political manifestos and novellas – similarly produced small-batch publications, distributing and selling those small books in cafes and bars and on street corners. While not strictly zines, as their print quality was considerably superior, these types of small-batch, mostly locally distributed works certainly reflected a similar ethos that promoted the distribution of diverse voices that were not being represented in much of the popular press, which was still guarded by Francoist supporters. However, by the mid-late 1970s, as Spain transitioned to democracy, more professional publications were already circulating the works of Spanish comic creators belonging to underground culture, like N ­ azario, including the magazines Star (1974), Totem (1977), El Víbora (1979) and later Madriz (1984). Star, which dominated the burgeoning underground comic industry, far surpassed even the most successful fanzines in distribution and quality – focusing more on anthologising comics than on presenting information or commentary on creators of comics, music and film, although some of that was certainly interspersed between the comics. While many of those comic creators publishing in Star did find commercial and professional success, many comic fanzine producers of the period were located in a unique set of circumstances, often inspired by those Spanish comic professionals (who were influenced by cre­ ators within and beyond national boundaries), and were most likely in a position in which it was not feasible to publish their work with larger, more established publishers which had come to dominate Spain’s underground comic scene. In fact, if one looks at the work featured in El comix marginal español, published by Star, a now 13 Farry, Javier Mariscal, Nazario Luque Vera and Pepichek, El Rrollo enmascarado (­Barcelona: El Rrollo Producciones, 1973). 14 See Valencia-García, Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture, chaps. 6–7.

66

Louie Dean Valencia-García

famous contemporary anthology of the ‘best’ underground comic artist-writers in Spain of the period, one will see no women represented amongst the creators who were featured and interviewed, even though nearly 95 per cent of Spanish girls read comics, according to one 1957 survey.15 Despite the willingness of underground comics to show blatant sexuality, and even queer characters, there were certainly barriers to women creators and comics that reflected their experiences.16

A Democratic and Pluralistic Form Fanzines had a home-made, DIY quality to them – keeping in line with the punk aesthetic that also relied on safety pins and patches to put together a distinctive style. The simple, stapled-together photo­copied pages contained a variety of content – information on venues and bands, commentaries on music and film, self-made art, photos and, of course, comics – although often specialised in a topic, or band, of particular interest. Fanzines, like their more professional brethren, were often made by multiple people – sometimes anonymously or using a nom de plume – producing a bricolage of text and images, copy and pasted together in pamphlet form.17 Young Madrileños drew on images and tropes from a variety of sources, from English new wave musicians such as David Bowie to the Belgian bande dessinée Tintin au Congo, while still making them their own. Through these fanzines, often traded amongst friends or sold in bars, record shops and Madrid’s Rastro, a Sunday street market located in the city centre, young people became cultural producers, bypassing normal means of production and distribution and creating a culture that was postmodern and anti-fascist in the sense that the material promoted pluralism in the aftermath of an authoritarian, fascistic regime and refused to be subjected to censor­ship for approval. The Rastro’s connection to Roma communities in particular is also important, as it 15 Jesús María Vázquez, ‘Sociología infantil: Encuesta sobre la lectura de los niños en un sector de Madrid’ [Child sociology: Survey on reading of children in a sector of Madrid], Revista de educación 67 (1957): 42. 16 See Luis Vigil and Juan José Fernández, eds., El comix marginal español (Barcelona: Producciones Editoriales 1976). While no woman is featured in the collection, there is the name of someone named ‘Kim’ from Barcelona – a name that is not typical of Spain and could have been a nickname. The photograph of the artist featured is that of a seated cowboy. 17 ‘Bricolage’ was first used to describe punk culture by the cultural theorist Dick ­Hebdige, who borrowed the term from Claude Lévi-Strauss. See Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge, 2008); Claude Lévi-Strauss, La pensée sauvage [Wild thinking] (Paris: Plon, 1962).



Tintin in the Movida madrileña

67

demonstrated that a primary place where these zines circulated was a market­place known for being both ethnically diverse and welcoming to people from a wide social stratum. In 1982, to encapsulate the place and importance of the fanzine, despite poor production values, one writer, Agustín Tena, in the popular political-cultural magazine Triunfo, wrote, ‘La penuria de la forma no oculta la riqueza de contenidos, en este caso, y el del fanzine es un mundo apasionante, plural como la vida misma’ [The poverty of the form does not hide the richness of the content, in this case, the world of the fanzine is passionate, pluralistic like life itself].18 This pluralism was composed of a multitude of voices that were represented in both an individual zine and the ability for a multitude of people to make their voices and interests heard. Indeed, new technologies have often been an impetus for pluralism. As Stephen Duncombe has argued, zines can in fact be compared to eighteenth-century pamphlets: Pamphleteers used a personal voice, but, for the most part, the poli­ tics discussed were abstracted from themselves, of interest to the public. . . . Although uttered with a personal voice, theirs was a public discourse. For zines, politics, like all other topics, is pri­marily a personal discourse. Part of this bent reflects how politics have been popularly defined since the late sixties. One of the prominent ideas that came out of the tumult that was the New Left was the idea that the ‘personal is political’.

Duncombe argues that zines bring ‘political issues from the state to the bedroom’ and ‘refract all these issues through the eyes and experience of the individual creating the zine’.19 One might add the caveat that multiple people often contributed to zines. While zines were certainly individual projects in some cases, they were collective in others. Still, his argument holds true more broadly, as any artisanal or do-it-­yourself project necessarily must reflect the circumstances of the individual producing the object. This, too, might be the case for mass-produced objects, although that type of production process often erases any signs of what Walter Benjamin might call an ‘aura’ of the object – though even mechanically reproduced objects can certainly acquire an aura over time, as any collector of mass-produced comic books can affirm. The zine, as a medium, certainly does both these things: both operating at an artisanal level and being produced in small to large batches. The messiness of the zine form gives it a kind of aura, although 18 Agustín Tena, ‘El fanzine en España’, Triunfo (July/August 1982), 48–49. 19 Stephen Duncombe, Notes from the Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alterna­ tive Culture (Bloomington: Microcosm Publishing, 2008), 33.

68

Louie Dean Valencia-García

­ echanically produced. With each crease, imperfect staple or faded m pirated reproduction, zines give off an aura despite, and perhaps because of, mechanical reproduction. The conditions under which zines were made partially explain why zines promoted pluralism. More than forty-five different fanzines originated in Madrid in the second half of the 1970s alone – many produced in working-class neighbourhoods and not the more affluent city centre. Because of irregular (or non-existent) printing schedules, many of these zines had single-issue runs; some produced numerous issues over several years. In addition to being produced semi-regularly, many zines were also unnumbered, creating challenges when dating those materials. The actual number of publishers was not particularly large, and the quantity of zines produced, and their readership writ large, is difficult to determine because of pirated editions and frequent sharing of those zines amongst readers. 1977 was the peak year for production of the most variety of independent, new fanzines being produced.20 While it is difficult to identify the cause of this peak, the initial proliferation of independent zines was likely followed by a decline because comic zine makers began to find commercial success in larger magazines with national distribution. In 1978, the new Spanish Constitution was signed, marking the most drastic shift in governance in Spain since the rise of Franco’s fascistic dictatorship. In Spain, new technologies, comic-fanzine culture and a general will to transgress against Francoist conservatism proved formative for the careers and development of Movida protagonists Alaska and Pedro ­A lmodóvar (b. 1949). The two eventually became known as principal figures of the Movida madrileña, the anti-authoritarian youth culture that came to redefine acceptable modes of behaviour in the post-Franco years. Alaska, whose mother was Cuban and father was a Spanish exile from the Spanish Civil War, immigrated to Spain from Mexico as a teenager. By the early 1980s, Alaska came to dominate popular new wave music in Spain and Latin America. Cineaste Pedro Almodóvar came to Madrid from a rural area of the Spanish province of Castilla-La Mancha and eventually became an Academy Award–winning director known for his queer characters and elaborate and colourful films, many of which were centred on the lives of women of diverse classes and nationalities. 20 Kike Babas and Kike Turrón, De espaldas al kiosco: Guía histórica de fanzines y otros papelujos de alcantarillas [Behind the Back to the kiosk: Historic guide of fanzines and other sewage] (Madrid: Los Libros del Cuervo, 1996). Babas and Turrón’s guide is an excellent reference of most, if not all, the significant fanzines and comics during the period. The work includes addresses when available, as well as a brief description of the work.



Tintin in the Movida madrileña

69

Both started their careers by making comics for self-­published zines, selling those hand-made publications and other comics in Madrid’s street markets and eventually transitioning to other art forms such as film, music and television. While both figures are well known to Spain for their later work, we should consider the influence of comics and zines in their larger oeuvre, paying attention to how those comics reflect their comic-like qualities – and not just aesthetically.21 Alaska starred in Almodóvar’s films, and Almodóvar often shared the stage with Alaska. By working on zines, the two learned the value of collaboration, which later transferred to their more popular work as many of those original collaborators continued as part of their perspective creative and musical efforts. Indeed, these collaborative efforts echo both comic book production teams and Enlightenment-era print shop culture, both of which relied upon a division of labour. While many art producers certainly shared this desire to work in collectives, it is safe to say that A ­ lmodóvar and Alaska first learned this through their zine and comic production. In fact, despite numerous musical iterations and re­namings, Alaska even still regularly collaborates with those artists she first made zines with, particularly Nacho Canut, with whom she collaborated first on Liviandad del imperdible and then Kaka de luxe [Crap de luxe] (which was the title of both their zine and their punk band), amongst numerous other iterations throughout the 1980s (Illustration 3.2). Both Almodóvar and Alaska have become known for their use of bright Superman reds, tight leather and over-thetop costuming and comic-inspired production. In A ­ lmodóvar’s first full-length film, Pepi, Luci, Bom y las otras chica del montón [Pepi, Luci, Bom and the other girls from the heap], which also starred Alaska, both Superman and Wonder Woman are referenced. ­Between quick vignettes, with camera framing that often mimics comic panels, Almodóvar’s comic influence is clear.

Redrawing the Boundaries The often coarsely drawn comics give insight into the ways in which young people understood gender and sexuality during the transition to democracy. As Radcliff argues, ‘The analysis of gender and citizenship requires a process of re-imagining and 21 Colin Beineke uses ‘comicity’ – a phrase I am not particularly taken with, but it does serve as a useful placeholder until a more elegant phrasing appears. Colin Beineke, ‘On Comicity’, Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society 1, no. 1 (2017): 226–253.

70

Louie Dean Valencia-García

Illustration 3.2. Kaka de luxe 1, pirate edition (original 1977, pirate edition 1984). As the zine La livandad del imperdible came to an end, Kaka de luxe came into being. Although less political, it focused on political issues and music. The members went on to form an eponymous punk band, whose members included F ­ ernando Márquez (‘El Zurdo’), Manolo Campoamor, Carlos Berlanga, Enrique Sierra, María Olvido Gara Jova (‘Alaska’) and Nacho Canut.



Tintin in the Movida madrileña

71

redrawing of boundaries in order to recognise the subject’. 22 In many senses, this is quite literally what comic fanzine makers were doing. While many comics that were featured in zines reinscribed ethnocentric, racist and sexist images, they often also simultaneously lauded women and people of colour. 23 When done well, some of the material certainly pushed against the boundaries of Francoist constructions of gender and sexuality. To locate some of these varied instances, I will rely on close readings of comics and comic-­inspired work found in zines in the early 1980s, particularly Ediciones moulinsart and 96 Lágrimas. Ediciones moulinsart, a well-known zine of the era named after the home of Captain Haddock in the Tintin comics, in reality featured very few comics. When Ediciones did, the editors used repurposed Tintin comics that spoke to the experience of the Movida madrileña: palimpsest speech and thought bubbles where the text was erased to make way for new text, often discussing quotidian discussions of concerts and new music. Colin Beineke’s idea of ‘comicity’ proves useful to understand the ways in which this zine, despite a scarcity of actual comics, acts as a comic throughout. In particular, the black-and-white zine used Ben-Day dots throughout its issues to give the feel of a comic. Additionally, Ediciones repurposed images of the pulp classic The Phantom throughout the fanzine, used more decoratively than as reprinted comics. In each issue, the zine’s layout spreads often recall vignettes and splash pages of comics. Ediciones moulinsart had five regular issues and three special issues dedicated to particular musicians such as the English New Wave band Joy Division and a variety of Spanish New Wave bands. In the last issue of Ediciones moulinsart, in 1982, the editors cynically announced they had decided to stop publication 22 Radcliff, ‘Imagining Female Citizenship’, 502. 23 Several issues of 96 Lágrimas both lauded and used minstrel caricatures to depict black musicians such as Diana Ross and the Supremes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and Smokey Robinson. These zines showed the influence of black musicians on poetry and new wave music but struggled to break away from racialised stereotypes that were common in Spain during the period. Blackface characters were common in Spain and featured in the Conguitos [Little Congolese] chocolate candy, which debuted in Spain in 1961 and were even confused with a candy called Chimpancitos [Little chimpanzees], resulting in a court case. Blackface characters were also featured in the Spanish variation of a chocolate milk drink mix (Cola Cao), which even as recently as 2017 brought back the racist blackface image in an advertising campaign. See Luis Landeira, ‘El negro de Cola Cao y otros anuncios increíblemente racistas’ [The Black Man of Cola Cao and other incredibly racist ads], Público, 16 April 2017. Some examples can be found on the back covers of 96 Lágrimas, unnumbered, dedicated to Glutamato Ye-Yé (c. 1981–1984); 96 Lágrimas 1, dedicated to Joy Division, the Clash, New Order and the Elegantes (c. 1981–1984); 96 Lágrimas 4, dedicated to the Cure (c. 1981–1984).

72

Louie Dean Valencia-García

because the fanzine scene had seemingly become inundated with people who had nothing better to do and had ‘discovered that pirate journalism is their one true vocation’. Additionally, the editors wanted to be able to say, ‘I killed it because it was mine’. And most importantly, as the editors admitted in their final editorial, they had new work and collaborations pending. Curiously, in that last issue, the editors decided to feature pinups drawn by Víctor (‘Coyote’) María Aparicio Abundancia (b. 1958). This would have been quite the coup for the zine dedicated to the Movida madrileña, as Coyote was a member of the Spanish New Wave band Los Coyotes. To relegate such images to simple sexism – to consider it an aberration – would be facile. As the Spanish film scholar and queer theorist Paul Julian Smith argues, ‘It seems unhelpful to simply dismiss male writers who exhibit signs of sexism, but far more productive to examine those “negative images” for the contradictions they bear within them, to reveal that any such content is an ideological construct’.24 While certainly reinscribing a form of toxic masculinity, those pin-up drawings were simultaneously creating a space where sexuality could be brought back to the public sphere, which was severely restricted under Francoism. The pin-ups occupy three pages of the fanzine; the images eschew realism for comic drawings, exposing the women’s breasts. One woman, bare-chested, hunches over in a position that would appear rather uncomfortable, standing next to some sort of indeterminate animal. Here there is no ambiguity. The comic zine becomes a platform for the objectification of women. Even the zine’s back cover features an image of a woman in her underwear, surrounded by Ben-Day dots, looking off to her side with a full smile, pulling back her hair, looking away coquettishly as though not aware of the viewer. Used as a sort of last hoorah for the last issue of the zine, the images do not match the previous tone of the zine, which relied on images that seemingly belonged to a 1960s comic book and not 1940s pin-ups. The use of pin-ups and the Ben-Day dots also evoked a longing for the past. The pin-ups were risqué but not as vulgar as many of the underground comics that were popular in magazines such as Star and El víbora. Although the comic zine, as a form, allowed young people to express a sexuality that had been repressed under the dictatorship, those forays into transgression were also often problematically misogynistic. Indeed, while much sexism, implicit and explicit, was certainly found in the Spanish comics of the 1970s, there were attempts 24 Paul Julian Smith, The Body Hispanic: Gender and Sexuality in Spanish and Span­ ish American Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001), 3.



Tintin in the Movida madrileña

73

at embracing feminism. Unfortunately, finding young women’s voices in the immediate aftermath of the Franco regime can prove frustratingly difficult, especially given that many of the comic zine writers and artists are difficult to identify in the first place. Regarding women in the post-Franco era, Maria DiFrancesco argues, ‘For female writers, the liberation of discourse has meant increased access to forward-looking media outlets that facilitated and supported their writing about themselves and their experiences as women’.25 Some zine makers, like Alaska, certainly used the forward-­looking comic zine as a platform for women’s voices. ­A nother comic zine that made similar efforts was 96 Lágrimas, which began in 1981. The first issue was sold for an incredibly affordable 40 pesetas, which would have been less than a quarter of a euro today, with a first run of five hundred copies and an eventual total printing of nine hundred (not including any pirated editions).26 96 Lágrimas, and fanzines like it, reinforced the image of the vibrant punk scene that was inclusive and feminist while still acknowledging the very real danger women encountered. One chronicler of the Movida, Paco Martín, contemporarily called 96 Lágrimas the ‘boletín informativo más curioso y simpatico del rollo madrileño’ [most curious and sympathetic informative bulletin of the rollo madrileño].27 In this sense, the zine stood out amongst others which tended to avoid more weighty topics. While the identity of the artist(s) is not indicated in many of the issues, many comics in the zine featured women protagonists. The second issue includes a hand-drawn, three-page comic titled ‘Mistery [sic] in Siouxie House’ (Illustration 3.3). The comic demonstrates a strain of feminist thought within the Movida, although the author is not identified. The crudely drawn comic, presumably inspired by the real-life English punk rocker Siouxsie Sioux, follows a protagonist who resembles Sioux and her group of girlfriends. The women are walking unnamed streets and going to concerts and parties, dressed in punk clothing (spiked hair, leather jackets, etc.). In the comic, a young woman is attacked by a group of three men and left on a street corner. 25 Maria DiFrancesco, Feminine Agency and Transgression in Post-Franco Spain: Gen­ erational Becoming in the Narratives of Carme Riera, Cristina Fernández Cubas and Mercedes Abad (Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, 2008), 11–12. 26 Babas and Turrón, De espaldas al kiosco 124. 27 Also of note, Martín’s use of rollo madrileño not only indicates that rollo and movida were interchangeable but also ties the fanzine to nightlife and drug culture. On some level, despite renaming the movement Movida madrileña, Martín also sees it as part of el Rrollo. See Paco Martín, La movida: Historia del pop madrileño (Madrid: Self-­published, 1982), 21.

74

Louie Dean Valencia-García

Illustration 3.3. 96 Lágrimas 2 (c. 1981–1984). A later but lauded fanzine, 96 Lágrimas, featured national and international new wave, punk and early pop/rock music from the 1950s and 1960s. Artists contributed exclusive comics for the zine, often depicting everyday life of young madrileños.



Tintin in the Movida madrileña

75

While the comic does not specifically say the woman attacked was raped, the self-congratulatory posturing of the men and the position of the woman left sprawled across the ground leaves the question open to interpretation. The men are marked as members of the Organización de Miembros de Emisoras de Radio Horteras y Aburridas [Organisation of Members of Boring and Tacky Radio Stations], or OMERHA. In retaliation, an armed women’s group known as the Speedy Es Cojunda [Speedy Is Badass] is formed for the purpose of vengeance. Upon returning home, the protagonist joins other women as they search out the men to teach them a lesson, promising, ‘Vamos a por vosotros’ [We are coming for you].28 The comic does have an empowering message: women can come together and respond against violence. Coming out of a patriarchal regime in which women were second-class citizens, this was indeed a powerful image. In fact, this revenge trope was also found in Almodóvar’s film Pepi, Luci y Bom in which the protagonist, Pepi (Carmen Maura), is raped by a police officer and then rallies her friends (including the character played by Alaska) to seek revenge. On the second page of the short comic, an unnamed woman is sent to poison Siouxsie, but, in a twist of fate, another woman is accidently killed instead. Siouxsie then searches out the woman who gave her the poisoned drink, wraps a chain around her neck, imprisoning her, and demands that she be taken to the OMERHA’s preferred hangout. The fact that a woman was sent after Siouxsie makes apparent that, even within the transgressive Movida, a tension was indeed present as to the role of women in the scene – to whom they were to show loyalty. Although a woman could be enjoying herself in the public sphere, partying and drinking, there was still an underlying fear that she could have patriarchal allegiances, rejecting feminist liberation. Another comic found in 96 Lágrimas, in an unnumbered issue dedicated to the Madrid-based band Glutamato Ye-Yé (Illustration 3.4), features a group of women who are out partying (potentially the same women in the aforementioned comic, based on aesthetic rendering, but not explicit­ly said) and sitting on a sofa in a club; one turns to another and asks for a ‘dexi’, the slang term used for Dexedrine, an ­amphetamine. As a band called the No-­Humanos takes the stage, an unnamed protagonist goes to the bar, thinking to herself that it is going to be the most fun night out she has ever had [la fiesta iba a ser de lo mas ‘güay’]. The band is composed of five humanoid robots with non-­d istinct features, ­helmet-like 28 96 Lágrimas 2 (c. 1981–1984), 4.

76

Louie Dean Valencia-García

Illustration 3.4. 96 Lágrimas, unnumbered, edition dedicated to Glutamato Ye-Yé (c. 1981–1984). Like many zines of the era, issues were often dedicated to specific bands. While many of these later zines were less explicitly political, they often lauded transgressive figures.



Tintin in the Movida madrileña

77

heads and no gender markers. Watching the band from the other side of the bar, she muses: ‘Me gustaría saber si se lo hacen con las tías [. . .] A lo mejor ya han superado esa necesidad’ [I wonder if they do it with women (. . .) Maybe they’ve overcome that need’] (emphasis added). Their song begins: ‘Ella es de plexiglas, y por eso me gusta másss. Está echa de metal, y por eso me gusta másss’ [She is made of Plexiglas, and that is why I like her more. She’s made of metal, and that is why I like her more]. After the performance, the protagonist tells her friend she wants help hooking up with one of the members of No-­Humanos. The woman casually bumps into a band member, causing it to malfunction and respond distressfully in a ­robotic tone. The woman’s friend accuses the band member of taking its charade too far but then quickly propositions it to follar [have sex]. The robot replies and continues to repeat, ‘­Es-just-to – lo-que-pen-sa-ba-sois – u-nas – sal-va-jes – sin – ­fu-tu-ro’ [This – is – just – what – I – thought – you – are – all – ­savages – without – a – future]. The girlfriend accuses the robot of acting like an idiot, and in a moment of frustration, as the band member continues to repeat its verbal attack, the woman hits and knocks off its head. The protagonist is shocked and then comforted by her friends. The unnamed friend also looks surprised, and her boyfriend, who had not said a word until the end, thinks to himself, ‘¡Vaya amigas más raras que tiene mi chica!’ [What strange friends my girl has!].29 On the face of it, the three-page comic is hardly demonstrative of exceptional writing or drawing ability; however, it does display a feminist shift in Spain, as young women are depicted as both asserting their sexual desires and being physically aggressive. The robots, based on their lyrics, do not seem to desire sex with human women – only wanting non-human companionship. The comic hardly gives any resolution to the reader but does both subvert expectations between mating rituals and blur the lines of sexual attractions. The comic clearly shows solidarity among women, despite one’s choice to attempt to have sex with a robot. While this comic in many ways leaves the reader hanging, it concurrently breaks expectations of what a relationship might entail and who can pursue a relationship – given that two women are the ones literally attacking the genderless robot. However, in their pursuit, the robot also defends itself with words, accusing the women of being salvajes [savages] – a loaded word that Spaniards had levied for centuries against indigenous people in the Americas. In fact, 29 96 Lágrimas, edition dedicated to Glutamato Ye-Yé (c. 1981–1984).

78

Louie Dean Valencia-García

that language was still in popular use in children’s textbooks in the 1960s to describe indigenous people.30 The complicated layers of both gender and racial stereotypes found in these scenes give women a place to assert agency and comradeship but at the same time reveal racialised language that ties sexual desire to ‘savagery’. Moreover, there is a role reversal here, as it is the Spanish woman who is actively pursuing a hook-up, displacing the coquette trope of the Spanish woman luring in a man with a fan – a sort of femme fatale figure. As early as the 1960s, the Spanish government even castigated the character Lois Lane for pursuing Superman.31 The women in this zine are taking drugs to enhance their sexual experiences. Even the recruitment of a friend to join the hunt recalls a masculine sort of night out, the appointment of a ‘wingman’ to help with talking to the potential mate. While the robot is removed from the picture at the end of the comic, the reader is left with a certain amount of ambiguity. Why was a straightforward demonstration of sexual desire by women considered ‘savage’? Meanwhile, the only man, the friend’s boyfriend, is left questioning what just happened – essentially asking, who are these modern women?

Conclusion Because of the nature of the form of zines – these cheap, stapled-­ together pamphlets – young people who might not have had the ability to publish so easily with larger, more established publishers were able to make subaltern voices heard. These comic zines reflected a moment of liberation in Spain: sexuality was being explored, and young people were being exposed to music from people of different cultural backgrounds. Yet, in the recesses of those publications, traces of racist and misogynist stereotypes still existed. These comic zines covered diverse audiences and subject matters – even promoting feminism. Nevertheless, young creators still carried with themselves sexist and racist tropes, which they 30 Jesús Álvarez Pérez and Antonio Álvarez Pérez, Mi cartilla: Método para el aprendizaje rápido y simultáneo de la lectura, escritura y dibujo – Tercera parte [My primer: Method for rapid and simultaneous learning of reading, writing and drawing – Part three] (Madrid: Edaf, 2011), 7. 31 Francoist administrators considered Lois Lane a ‘manly’ woman and lesbian, presumably for wearing pants and aggressively transgressing feminine roles (seen in her pursuit of Superman, rather than being pursued by him). The censors under the Franco regime eventually banned Superman comics in Spain and chastised the Man of Steel for his ‘asexuality’ and fear of women (because he was chased by Lois Lane). For more on the building of this youth culture, see Valencia-García, Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture, chap. 4.



Tintin in the Movida madrileña

79

might not have fully acknowledged. Even so, the cultural impact of having works dedicated to women’s issues such as assault and sexual desire and representation of people of colour in a country that was in fact ethnically more homogenous because of its fascist history was significant. While much can be said about the libertine nature of comic zines, they were a reflection of the new mentalitié of young Spaniards while also still carrying a troubled legacy.

Louie Dean Valencia-García is Assistant Professor of Digital History at Texas State University. He has taught at Harvard University and held fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the Spanish Ministry of Education, Science, and Sport; and the ­Caroline and Erwin Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon at the United States Library of Congress. He is a research editor for EuropeNow, the monthly journal of the Council for Euro­pean Studies at Columbia University, and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right. His first book, Antiauthoritarian Youth Culture in Francoist Spain: Clashing with Fascism (Bloomsbury, 2018), explores the role of underground and punk culture in creating pluralistic spaces under the fascist dictatorship of ­Francisco Franco.

Chapter 4

From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth Castelao in Galician Graphic Biography David Miranda-Barreiro

In one of the first academic studies on Galician comics, Germán Hermida suggested that banda deseñada was ‘a punto de ­estourar’ [about to explode] in 2005,1 referring to how the medium was gath­ ering momentum in Galicia.2 This feeling was confirmed in 2010 by Isabel Mociño González, who pointed out that BDG ‘está a ex­ perimentar unha forte consolidación’ [is undergoing considerable consolidation] owing to ‘o aumento considerábel da produción (es­ pecialmente de álbums) e o prestixio e galardóns que os ilustra­ dores galegos teñen acadado dentro e fóra de Galicia’ [an important 1 Banda deseñada, which is taken from Portuguese (and in turn taken from the French bande dessinée), is the term now widely accepted to refer to Galician comics. In this chapter, I will also use the shortened version, BDG. All trans­ lations of non-English references and quotations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 2 Germán Hermida, ‘BD 2005: Apuntamentos e dirección’ [BD 2005: Notes and direction], Boletín Galego de Literatura 35 (2007), 61–71 (69).



From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth 81

increase in its production (especially albums) and the prestige and awards that Galician artists have received both in Galicia and beyond], as well as to the creation of new publishing houses, maga­ zines and institutional comics awards.3 However, this significant increase in production has not been followed by a similar increase in academic interest, as Xulio Carballo Dopico states in his 2015 PhD dissertation, the first one devoted to Galician comics.4 Before Carballo’s work, the special journal issue ‘Olladas do cómic Ibérico’ [Views on Iberian comics], published by Santiago de Compostela University in 2007, was the first academic volume published by a Galician university on banda deseñada.5 The medium had also been approached from a scholarly perspective by Agustín Fernández Paz in 19846 and by Xosé Luis Axeitos and Xavier Seoane in 1993.7 More recently, the online journal Tebeosfera [Comicsphere] has devoted a special issue to the artist Xaquín Marín.8 Comics specialists such as Breixo Harguindey 9 and Anxo Rabuñal10 have also published their work in cultural magazines. Other sources of scholarship on banda deseñada have been exhibitions,11 and the website devoted 3 Isabel Mociño González, ‘Galicia dende a banda deseñada: Unha modalidade literaria en expansión’ [Galicia from the comic book: A literary modality in ex­ pansion], Mundu bat begirada anitz / Un mundo muchas miradas [A world with multiple looks] 2 (2010), 77–99 (79). 4 Xulio Carballo Dopico, ‘Para unha historia da Banda Deseñada Galega: A na­ rración a través da linguaxe gráfico-textual’ [For a history of Galician Banda Deseñada: Narration through graphic-textual language], unpublished PhD diss., Universidade da Coruña, 2015, 3. Carballo Dopico’s thesis is a key reference for Galician comics studies because of the great amount of ground it covers and the detailed approach that it takes; it will be abundantly quoted in this chapter. The thesis has been subsequently published as Os pioneiros da banda deseñada galega (1971–1979) [The Pioneers of Galician Comics (1971–1979)] (Vigo: Xerais, 2019). 5 Boletín Galego de literatura 35 (2007). 6 Agustín Fernández Paz, Para lermos comics [To read comics] (Santiago de Com­ postela: Xunta de Galicia, 1984). 7 Luis Axeitos and Xavier Seoane, O cómic en Galicia [Comics in Galicia] (A Coruña: Deputación Provincial de A Coruña, 1993). 8 ‘Xaquín Marín’, ed. Félix Caballero, Tebeosfera 4 (2017), https://revista.tebeosfera. com/sumario/4. 9 Breixo Harguindey, ‘Breve apunte para unha historia do cómic galego’ [Brief notes for a history of Galician comics], Consello da Cultura Galega (1999), http:// culturagalega.org/bd/documentos/breve_apunte_futura_historia_comic_ galego_breixo_harguindey.pdf. 10 Anxo Rabuñal, ‘Do Cómic á BD, pasando pola historieta’ [From Comics to BD, via the Comic Strip], Renova Galicia 3 (2007), 51–55. 11 La historieta gallega [The Galician comic strip] (Madrid, 2006); 10 anos de BD galega [Ten years of Galician BD] (itinerant exhibition, 2007); Historieta galega 1973–2008 (Santiago de Compostela, 2008); Galicia: Tempo de BD [Galicia: Time of BD] (­Barcelona, 2009); Galicia 2009: Tempo de BD (Angoulême, 2009); BDG70: A revolta do cómic galego [BDG70: The revolt of the Galician comic] (A Coruña, 2016–2017).

82

David Miranda-Barreiro

to comics created by the Consello da Cultura Galega [Galician Culture Council] in 2001.12 This chapter aims to contribute to the ­development of comics studies within Galician cultural studies, in line with the work previously undertaken by the afore­mentioned academics and specialists. It will do so by looking at the representa­ tion of Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao’s life (1886–1950) in Galician comics. One of the founders of Galician nationalism, a key member of the Nós [We] generation in the first decades of the century and leader of the Galicianist movement in exile after the Spanish Civil War, Castelao is the most emblematic figure of twentieth-­century Galician culture and politics, and a mythical status has been con­ ferred upon him in Galicia. The literary scholar Ricardo Carvalho Calero argues in a rather hagio­g raphical tone that ‘Rosalia [de Castro] e Castelao, forom escolhidas pola consciência nacional para a heroizaçom, para a beatificaçom’ [Rosalia (de Castro) and ­Castelao were chosen by the national consciousness for heroisation, for beatification].13 As also stated by Carvalho Calero, C ­ astelao first captured the attention of the Galician people as a graphic artist and through his use of humour and satire to denounce social in­ justice and the problems endured by his fellow Galicians.14 He published several comic strips at the beginning of his career in the magazine Vida gallega [Galician Life] in 1909 (Illustration 4.1), and became widely known owing to the series of cartoons Cousas da vida [Things from Life], which he started to publish in 1922 in the newspaper Galicia. Some of them were also in sequential form (Illustration 4.2). Furthermore, Castelao achieved international recognition with his álbums (in this case, meaning collections of drawings) about the Spanish Civil War: Galicia mártir [Martyr Galicia] (Valencia, 1937), Atila en Galicia [Attila in Galicia] (Valen­ cia, 1937) and Milicianos [Militiamen (referring to the Republican army)] (New York, 1938).15 In this chapter, I will analyse comics biographies of this artist written from the 1970s to the present day: from the first (and shorter) graphic renditions of his life by Paco Martín, Ulises S. Sarry and Xoán Balboa (1975),16 to Isaac Díaz Pardo’s treatment 12 http://www.culturagalega.org/bd. 13 Ricardo Carvalho Calero, Escritos sobre Castelao [Writings on Castelao] (Santiago de Compostela: Sotelo Blanco 1989), 11. 14 Ibid., 15. 15 They can be seen online on the Museo de Pontevedra’s website at http://www. museo.depo.es/coleccion/catalogo.castelao/es.03110000.html. 16 Paco Martín, Ulises S. Sarry and Xoán Balboa, ‘Castelao: O home’ [Castelao: The man], Axóuxere supplement of La Región (11 January 1975).



From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth 83

Illustration 4.1. Castelao, ‘Ojo clínico’ [Clinical eye], Vida gallega 5 (May 1909), np. Panel 1: ‘. . . and then he went and bumped his head against the cart’s yoke’. Panel 2: ‘Don’t tell me anything. I already know what you have. You bumped your head against the cart’s yoke’. Reproduced with the kind permission of Javier Baltar Tojo.

84

David Miranda-Barreiro

Illustration 4.2. Castelao, ‘Conto’ [Story], 175 debuxos, np. (1): ‘Here we have Xan with a good pig’s haunch, going to a consultation.’ (2) ‘– How much do I owe you, sir? / – Because it’s you it’ll be nothing, my friend.’ (3) ‘– Many thanks, sir. God bless you.’ (4) ‘And here we have Xan going back home with his pig’s haunch.’ Reproduced with the kind permission of Javier Baltar Tojo.

(1985),17 the album Castelao (1987) by Siro, Mazaira and ­Cubeiro,18 and the ongoing series Castelao (2012–2015) by Inacio and Iván Suárez.19 In addition to examining the formal features of these comics, I will pay attention to how graphic biographies have con­ tributed to the mythologisation of ­Castelao within Galician culture and society. In this regard, and as Tim Lanzen­dörfer points out, ‘unlike autobiography, biography in comics does not have a long critical history’, despite ‘the large volume of biographi­cal comics in existence’. 20 Literary biography has not fared much better. ­Michael Benton also argues that, since it ‘lies between history and fiction and has often been seen as the poor relation of both’, it ‘has attracted little theoretical interest from either side’.21 Because 17 Isaac Díaz Pardo, Castelao (A Coruña: Ediciós do Castro, 1985). 18 Siro, Mazaira and Cubeiro, Castelao (A Coruña: Nova Galicia, 1987). 19 Inacio and Iván Suárez, O pobre tolo [The poor madman] (Santiago de Compost­ ela: Demo Editorial, 2012); Titoán (Santiago de Compostela: Demo Editorial, 2012); Máis alá [Further beyond] (Santiago de Compostela: Demo Editorial, 2013), Atila (Santiago de Compostela: Demo Editorial, 2015). 20 Tim Lanzendörfer, ‘Biographiction: Narratological Aspects of Chester Brown’s Louis Riel’, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 59, no. 1 (2014), 27–40 (27). 21 Michael Benton, Literary Biography: An Introduction (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 3.



From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth 85

of biography’s liminality, I suggest that it is fruitful to follow a transdisciplinary approach by drawing on comics theory (Thierry Groensteen), literary biography (Michael Benton) and ­adaptation (Linda Hutcheon), in order to contribute to the expansion of graphic biography studies.

Castelao and the Origins of Contemporary Galician Comics The consensus amongst Galician comics scholars is that banda deseñada came into being in the 1970s.22 Axeitos and Seoane argue that the late presence of a truly urban and industrial society and a certain delay in the arrival of new forms of expression, due to Galicia’s peripheral condition, hindered the appearance of comics.23 However, not only must Axeitos and Seoane’s generalisation about Galicia’s artistic deficiencies be nuanced (as Galician comic strips were starting to appear before 1936), but the repression suffered by Galician culture during Francoism should also be taken into account. As Carballo Dopico states, ‘[o] d ­ esastre da Guerra Civil interrompería, porén, as publicacións dos nosos creadores que (. . .) ou tiveron que exiliarse ou silenciarse – cando non ser silenciados’ [(the) disaster of the Civil War would interrupt, however, the pub­ lications of our (Galician) artists who (. . .) either had to go into exile or into silence – or were silenced]. 24 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the birth of contemporary Galician comics, in the last decade of Francisco Franco’s dictatorial regime, was not devoid of political intentions, as is shown by the work of its two main foundational figures in this period: Xaquín Marín and Reimundo Patiño.25 As argued by Carballo Dopico, in some of Patiño’s work one can see the influence of, and even a tribute to, Castelao’s politi­ cal drawings.26 Castelao’s influence and presence emerges from the very beginnings of contemporary Galician comics. Inspired by Patiño’s work, and in particular by his avant-garde comic mural O home que falaba vegliota [The man who spoke ­Vegliot] (1972), several young Galician artists created the Grupo de Cómics do Castro [Castro Comics Group] in 1972. ­C arballo Dopico points out that the backbone of this group was its antiauthoritarian­ism and its claim for freedom of expression (­including 22 For example for Axeitos and Seoane, Harguindey, Hermida and Carballo. 23 Axeitos and Seoane, O cómic, 5. 24 Carballo Dopico, ‘Para unha historia’, 38. 25 Ibid., 54. 26 Ibid., 127, 131.

86

David Miranda-Barreiro

the right to create in Galician).27 Similarly, Axeitos and Seoane state that ‘hai no grupo unha pretensión de concienciar políticamente ao povo galego através da linguaxe do comic’ [there is in this group the aspiration of making Galician people politically aware by using the language of comics].28 In 1973, it curated the first official comics exhibition. Its leaflet, as recorded by Carballo Dopico, alluded to the origins of comics in Galicia: En Galicia pódese entroncar, en certo senso, o ‘comic’ coa tradición dos romances de cego, que foron de completa aceptación popular. (. . .) Pensamos que a mellor arma coa que contamos é a do humor, a sátira, que é o que máis corresponde o carácter anímico galego.29 [In some ways, comics in Galicia can be connected to the tradition of the chapbooks sold by itinerant blind ballad singers, which were fully socially accepted. (. . .) We think that humour and satire are our best weapons, since they are better suited to the Galician character.]

This statement evidences the need to reconnect with a lost and interrupted tradition. Apart from the older precedent of the blind ballad singers’ chapbooks (to which I will return later), here Car­ ballo Dopico also identifies a reference to early twentieth-century cartoonists such as Carlos Maside and Castelao.30 Castelao’s influence on banda deseñada, as one of the first Gali­ cian artists who attempted to combine text and image in Galicia (both in sequential and non-sequential form), was also subse­ quently shown by the tributes that Galician comic artists have paid him since the 1970s. For example, the exhibition organised in 1975 by the cultural association O Facho [The torch] was significantly entitled Mostra de cómic Galego: Homenaxe a Castelao [Galician comics exhibition: Tribute to Castelao]. The comics author Siro gave the talk ‘Humor gráfico, caricatura e comic galegos’ [Graphic humour, caricature and Galician comics], where he referred to Castelao and attempted to link his work to the emerging BDG.31 Furthermore, Castelao was also mentioned in a round table in the context of the origins of Galician comics.32 Once more, this shows the intention of new artists to somehow re-establish a continuity in the medium that had been broken up by the war. Castelao not only constituted a key precedent, but also a mirror into which 1970s artists could look at themselves: the fight (against fascism, against 27 Ibid., 148. 28 Axeitos and Seoane, O cómic, 8. 29 Carballo Dopico, ‘Para unha historia’, 173. 30 Ibid., 175. 31 Ibid., 214. 32 Ibid., 215.



From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth 87

Franco, against totalitarianism, against the injustices suffered by Galicia) remained the same.

Castelao in Graphic Biography As the medium developed, Castelao also became visually present as a character in the initial attempts to bring his life into comics. In 1975, still under Franco’s rule, the supplement Axóuxere [Rattle] (devoted to children’s comics, the first of its kind in Galicia) pub­ lished with the newspaper La Región [The region], paid tribute to Castelao for the twenty-­fi fth anniversary of his death. As part of this homage, it included a two-page comic entitled Castelao: O home by Paco Martín, Ulises S. Sarry and Xoán Balboa (Illustration 4.3). The comic follows the typical cradle-to-grave biographical formula, but because of the limited space deployed to tell the reader about Castelao’s life, it is also heavily dependent on selection, which is obviously a necessary technique of biography.33 However, Carballo Dopico argues that, because of the great amount of biographical in­ formation condensed in these two pages (thus implying a substan­ tial use of ellipsis), this work lacks in sequentiality and therefore in narrativity. Consequently, it would be closer to an ‘illustrated biog­ raphy’ than to a comic.34 Contrary to this view, I consider Castelao: O home the first comics biography of Castelao. While literary biographers ‘highlight the inevitable gaps in the history and, where possible (. . .) fill each with a plausible scenario or explanation’,35 the sequentiality of comics is based precisely on the existence of gaps between panels: the medium is hence ellip­ tical in nature. This allows a comic such as Castelao: O home to have continuity and coherence despite the wide time gap between panels. Following Thierry Groensteen’s understanding of how time is represented in comics, the reader spontaneously converts the inter-iconic space into a tem­ poral interval. S/he makes the supposition that succession in space (between two panels positioned one after the other) indicates suc­ cession in time. (. . .) The time gap between images can be very wide; this is the case of Hogarth’s cycles of engravings, where each one represents a different stage in the life of the protagonist, whose entire ‘career’ is recounted in six or eight images.36

33 Benton, Literary Biography, 21. 34 Carballo Dopico, ‘Para unha historia’, 548. 35 Benton, Literary Biography, 21. 36 Thierry Groensteen, Comics and Narration, trans. Ann Miller (Jackson: Univer­ sity Press of Mississippi, 2013), 37.

88

David Miranda-Barreiro

Illustration 4.3. Paco Martín, Ulises S. Sarry and Xoán Balboa, Castelao: O home, Axóuxere supplement of La Región, 11 January 1975, np. Notice the use of Castelao’s self-caricature in the top-left panel. I would like to express my gratitude to Xulio Carballo Dopico for facilitating access to this comic. Reproduced with the kind permission of Paco Martín Iglesias, editor of Axóuxere.



From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth 89

Furthermore, Groensteen also alludes to the anthropocentrism that characterises the narrative of comics, ‘the priority it gives to the character (. . .). From one panel to the next, the main ­character is generally repeated, remaining the centre of the action’.37 Although this can generally be applied to what he calls ‘traditional’ comics, it can also be considered a defining feature of ‘bio­graphiction’, to use Lanzendörfer’s term,38 since comics biographies rely strongly on the presence of their subject, which also occurs in Castelao: O home. Equally contentious are the cartaces de cego [blind ballad ­singers’ chapbooks] published by the influential artist Isaac Díaz Pardo (1920–2012) in the 1970s and 1980s, the last one entitled Castelao (1985) (Illustration 4.4). As we have already seen, the Grupo de Cómics do Castro considered the original chapbooks ‘the anteced­ ent to our comics’. These were not, however, exclusive to Galicia. Manuel ­Barrero also includes the romances [ballads] traditionally sung by blind men as examples of Spanish proto-comics: Los romances solían llevar una imagen (a veces dos o más) encabe­ zando un texto, siendo puramente descriptivas; cuando se popula­ rizó el romance con cuatro imágenes (con textos al pie o sin ellos) estas adquirieron un valor narrativo, pero lo tomaban en función del narrador intermediario que reproducía la historia (muchas veces un ciego).39 [Ballads usually had an image (sometimes two or more) above a text, and were purely descriptive; when ballads with four images became popular (either with captions at the bottom or not), these acquired narrative value, but it was taken from the function played by the mediating narrator who told the story (quite often a blind man).]

Díaz Pardo’s Castelao follows a comparable structure: it is displayed as a poster that comprises twenty panels (including the cover), with seven­teen of them having a caption underneath. These seventeen panels are also numbered, which shows a sequential intention. As in Castelao: O home, the biographical information (from the artist’s birth to the controversial return of his body to Galicia after his death) is heavily summarised in the captions, and there is therefore a wide time gap between panels. Just like in Martín, Sarry and Balboa’s work, Castelao appears in most of them as a character.

37 Ibid., 36. 38 Lanzendörfer, ‘Biographiction’. 39 Manuel Barrero, ‘Orígenes de la historieta española, 1857–1906’ [Origins of the Spanish comic strip], Arbor 187, no. EXTRA 2 (2011), 15–42 (20).

Illustration 4.4. Isaac Díaz Pardo, Castelao (A Coruña: Ediciós do Castro, 1985). Notice the reference to Castelao’s album Nós in panel 7 and the use of speech balloons. Reproduced with the kind permission of Camilo Díaz Arias de Castro.

90 David Miranda-Barreiro



From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth 91

Whereas Carballo Dopico40 and, indeed, Axeitos and Seoane41 are reluctant to consider Díaz Pardo’s posters as fully f ledged comics, by applying the same parameters as in the case of ­Castelao: O home, I argue that Díaz Pardo’s Castelao can be considered a comic biography in its own right. Moreover, the format chosen by Díaz Pardo also shows the intention to recover and update a form of sequential expression regarded as precursory for the medium, suggesting that Galicia can turn to its own graphic tradition for inspiration. In addition to the temporal distance between panels, both works also share a comparable use of images taken from Castelao’s own graphic work, which are emulated in these comics. These include reproductions of drawings from his ‘albums’ and from studies about calvaries that he conducted in Brittany and Galicia. Further­ more, both comics represent Castelao by redrawing one of his ‘self-caricatures’, which was published in the newspaper Galicia on 26 May 1923. The use of this caricature is especially prominent in Martín, Sarry and Balboa’s comic and serves to portray Caste­ lao as an adult. Such direct references to Castelao’s own work as a cartoonist reflect on his influence and key role as a graphic artist. These two comics also share an approach to Castelao that can be described as ‘biomythographical’, to borrow Benton’s concept. Benton argues: mythologising plays a bigger role in this sub-genre than with other subjects. In fact, saintliness, idolatry and celebrity appear so frequently in literary biography that ‘biomythography’ is a more apposite term since it recognises the role of these aspects of myth-making. It encompasses the necessary invention of self and identity by the writer, and the virtual representation of the subject by the biographer.42

Benton’s view of (some) biographies as myth making takes us back to how Castelao was described by Carvalho Calero in the 1980s.43 A similar stance is taken in these two comics. Castelao: O home finishes with a quote by the writer and politician Marino Dónega 40 Carballo Dopico, ‘Para unha historia’, 688. 41 Axeitos and Seoane, O cómic, 5. 42 Benton, Literary Biography, 48. 43 The view of Castelao as a ‘myth’ is indeed problematic, but it is beyond the scope of this chapter to provide a more critical examination of this issue or to ‘decon­ struct’ it. For further analysis, see Craig Patterson’s groundbreaking work in ‘“Delito e pecado”: Castelao, Galicia e o antisemitismo’ [‘Crime and sin’: Castelao, Galicia and antisemitism], Grial: Revista Galega de cultura 202 (2014), 52–63; ‘From Racism to Redemption’, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 16, no. 5 (2014), 693–715.

92

David Miranda-Barreiro

(1916–2001) that describes him as more than a man – as a symbol: ‘Castelao xa é patrimonio do pobo galego. No pobo tiña a súa ragaña nutricia e ó pobo perténcelle para sempre e por enteiro’ [Castelao is now part of the Galician people’s heritage. He took nourishment from the people and he fully and forever belongs to the people]. Although the last panel of Díaz Pardo’s work criticises those who want Castelao to become ‘un santo inofensivo nun altar escolleito’ [a harmless saint on a chosen altar], the comic also por­ trays the artist and politician as a Galician hero, ‘o Castelao do povo a súa esperanza erguendo por un mundo millor sin caciques nin demos’ [the people’s Castelao, who raises his hope for a better world without despots and devils]. It can be argued that one of the reasons why Castelao was con­ structed as a Galician cultural ‘myth’ was that his life encapsulates Galicia’s history in the first half of the twentieth century. He was a migrant in his childhood and a political exile in his adulthood, an active member of Galician culture and politics, and his adult life was marked dramatically by the Spanish Civil War. Narrating Castelao’s life inevitably involves relating key events in contem­ porary Galician history and is therefore open to be approached from an educational perspective, as we see in these two works. Sig­ nificantly, Castelao: O home was published in a comics magazine aimed at children; Castelao is dedicated on its cover to ‘os nenos, a esperanza de Galiza’ [the children, Galicia’s hope]. In both cases, there is the explicit purpose of educating Galicians (especially chil­ dren, in the case of Martín, Sarry and Balboa’s comic) about their own recent history. The same educational purpose can be found in the first fulllength graphic biography of the artist, Castelao (1987) by Siro, Mazaira and Cubeiro. In this case, the biography is in album format (sixty-two pages) and opens with a prologue by Antonio Fraguas (director of the Museo do Pobo Galego [Galician Folk Museum] at the time and Castelao’s personal friend) that is addressed to the target readership of the comic, namely children: Este libro é moi axeitado para que poidas achegarte á súa vida e á súa obra. En viñetas moi ben debuxadas e con textos breves e nidios, descobrirás ó Danieliño, rapaz coma ti (. . .). Vaino lendo amodo; xa verás como che presta e que grande amigo te vas facer deste home alto e con anteollos, artista e político; o home que mellor soubo en­ sinar a amar á nosa terra.44

44 Siro et al., Castelao, 5–6.



From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth 93 [This book is very suitable for you to learn about his life and his work. In very well-drawn panels and with clear and brief texts, you’ll discover little Daniel, a boy just like you. (. . .) Read it slowly, and you’ll see how you enjoy it and what a great friend you’ll become of this tall man with glasses, an artist and a politician, the man who best taught us how to love our land.]

Such a didactic intention must be contextualised as part of the ef­ forts to recover and bestow prestige on a culture that, as explained by Basilio Losada Castro, had been amputated and partially sup­ pressed by the dictatorial regime of Franco.45 It does not seem incidental that the first literary biography of Castelao was also published in the early 1980s (by Valentín Paz-Andrade).46 Further­ more, and as in the two cases previously discussed, Castelao’s life is also here approached from a rather hagiographical perspective, which places emphasis on his good-hearted spirit and commit­ ment to Galicia, as highlighted for example in the splash page that closes the comic (Illustration 4.5). The image shows a blurred re­ production of Castelao’s face in the middle of a clouded sky above a Galician landscape. Two texts by Castelao himself accompany the drawing, in which he expresses his wish to return to Galicia after his death in exile (either spiritually or physically by having his remains buried in his homeland). As well as emphasising such desire and the fact that his body was actually returned in 1984,47 this ending also visually represents Castelao as a ‘saint’ who now watches over his beloved Galicia. These three comics are thus part of the mythologisation of Castelao, a way of reconnecting with a part of Galician history and culture that Francoism had denied its people, as well as restor­ ing a link with the flourishing graphic art of the 1920s and 1930s. Further­more, they also rebuild Galician culture not only by actively engaging in text/image creation but also by taking advantage of the 45 Basilio Losada Castro, ‘Literatura gallega y censura franquista’ [Galician litera­ ture and Francoist censorship], Diálogos Hispánicos Peninsulares de Amsterdam 5 (1987), 57–67. 46 Valentín Paz Andrade, Castelao: Na luz e na sombra [Castelao: In the light and in the shadow] (1982; repr., Vigo: Galaxia, 2012). 47 In 1984, the Xunta de Galicia [Galician Autonomous Government] repatriated ­Castelao’s remains. Galician nationalism saw this decision as an act of manipu­ lation by the ruling party, the APdG, which was the political heir of Francoism. The return of Castelao’s embalmed body (another sign of mythologisation) was meant to represent the end of the transition to democracy in Galicia. However, Galician nationalism considered that Castelao’s ideal of a liberated Galicia was far from being completed and that his figure was being assimilated and depolit­ icised by the same forces that had kept him in exile. See e.g. Manuel Lueiro Rey, Novas crónicas dunha transición intranxisente (1977–1988) [New chronicles of an intransigent transition] (Santiago de Compostela: Laiovento, 2016).

94

David Miranda-Barreiro

Illustration 4.5. Siro, Mazaira and Cubeiro, Castelao (A Coruña: Nova Gali­ cia, 1987), 62. Reproduced with the kind permission of Suso Cubeiro.



From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth 95

appeal that the medium has traditionally had for children, in order to contribute to the education of Galician young people who might attain a greater awareness of their own history. Going back to Siro, Mazaira and Cubeiro’s album, it tells Caste­ lao’s life in a third-person narrative, following a chronological order (in cradle-to-grave fashion) with a great deal of factual detail. Most of the historical facts are conveyed through the extra­diegetic text included in the captions, which sometimes takes up most of the page, whereas the dialogues between characters have a more anec­ dotal (sometimes humorous) function. Pro­v iding such an impor­ tant amount of information would probably not have been possible without the existence of the aforementioned literary biography by Paz-Andrade, on which the comic seems to rely in some places where the captions are quite close to Paz-­Andrade’s text.48 ­Naturally, a biography cannot appear in isolation, as it necessarily has to make use of a plethora of reliable sources (letters, photographs, testimo­ nies, the biographee’s own writings). Furthermore, ‘successive bi­ ographies ineluctably take account of their antecedents’, according to Benton.49 The result is therefore a palimpsestuous text, and in this regard a fruitful connection may be made between biographies and adaptations as ‘inherently “palimpsestuous” works, haunted at all times by their adapted texts’, as argued by Linda Hutcheon. Drawing on Roland Barthes, Hutcheon suggests that adaptations are ‘a plural “stereophony of echoes, citations, references”’, and hence they can only be theorised ‘as inherently double or multi­ laminated works’.50 As graphic and literary biographies of ­Castelao are published, they not only build on previous texts, but also extend and amplify a network of references to pre-existing texts and doc­ uments. This comic includes direct quotes from Castelao’s own literary work (e.g. on pages 12 to 13), personal correspondence (pages 21 and 54), texts taken from newspapers (page 61), testi­ monies from other writers (page 28), and Castelao’s own graphic work. As with the comics that we have already seen, Siro, Mazaira and Cubeiro’s biography integrates Castelao’s cartoons and prints into the irregular page layout of their album. However, in this case, such images are not emulated but directly reproduced. This exhibits the biographers’ awareness of Castelao’s significance for the development of graphic art in Galicia. Castelao’s graphic work is repeated and re-contextualised in an album that draws on this 48 Cf. e.g. Siro et al., Castelao, 9; Paz Andrade, Castelao: Na luz en na sombra, 43. 49 Benton, Literary Biography, 63. 50 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2006), 6 (this and the previous quotation).

96

David Miranda-Barreiro

tradition to develop Galician comics. At the same time, all these intertextual references also contribute to the album’s educational purpose. Twenty-five years passed before a new graphic biography of ­Castelao was published: in 2011, Titoán by Inacio and Iván Suárez won the Premio Castelao de Banda Deseñada [Castelao Comics Award] organised by the A Coruña Council. The very existence of this award not only showcases the consolidation of Galician comic art (despite the issues of distribution and visibility it still faces) but also the acknowledgement of Castelao as a key referent for Gali­ cian comic artists. Moreover, his importance for Galician culture and politics still remains robust, as is shown by the supplement published by the newspaper Sermos Galiza in 2014 à propos the seventi­eth anniversary of the publication of Castelao’s seminal work Sempre en Galiza [Forever in Galicia] (1944).51 This publication also includes an interview with Inacio and Suárez, where they refer to Castelao as a ‘mestre’ [master].52 This once more underscores the influential status held by the artist in BDG. The inclusion of this interview in this publication also confirms the significance and prestige gained by the comics medium within Galician culture. Titoán is part of an ongoing series about Castelao’s life. This ambitious project envisages publishing eight volumes. To date, four of them have already come out: O pobre tolo (2012), Titoán (2012), Máis alá (2013) and Atila (2015). The series shares some charac­ teristics with the comics discussed above, one of them being the integration of C ­ astelao’s own graphic work into the biography. As in Siro, Mazaira and Cubeiro’s album, Inacio and Suárez’s work is also constructed around a network of references. Personal corre­ spondence is quoted on several occasions; for example, O pobre tolo opens with Castelao writing a letter to his friend and fellow writer and politician, Ramón Otero Pedrayo. ­Castelao’s own writings also have a strong presence in the biography: in the same volume, the first lines of the prologue to Sempre en Galiza are directly quoted and the source acknowledged in a footnote.53 To give another ex­ ample, the whole book entitled Titoán is a re-creation of Castelao’s own short story ‘Peito de lobo’ [Wolf’s heart]. This comic imagines the process of writing the short story and therefore fictionalises Castelao’s life to some extent, something that is acknowledged by

51 Marcos Loureiro, ed., ‘70 anos do Sempre en Galiza’ [70 years of Forever in Galicia], A Fondo: Caderno de Análise 58. Sermos Galiza, 13 March 2014. 52 Interview by Marcos Loureiro, 5. 53 Inacio and Suárez, O pobre tolo, 35–37.



From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth 97

the authors themselves.54 The tension between fact and fiction, in­ herent in literary biography, according to Benton,55 is more present in this series than in the works previously examined. Eschewing heavy reliance on facts and dates, Inacio and Suárez’s graphic bi­ ography straddles adaptation and the conventions of biography. A case in point is an episode that takes place in O pobre tolo, where the Galician artist recounts his visit to an osteologist in Paris in 1921, which was recorded in his personal diary (published in 1977 as Diario 1921).56 The comic establishes a dialogue between Diario 1921 and Castelao’s collection of short stories Cousas,57 which also includes illustrations by the artist. In his diary, Castelao tells the reader how the osteologist showed him a collection of ‘tattooed skins’ taken from deceased men.58 In the comic, he recalls that one of these tattoos is a bird with a letter in its beak.59 This detail is not mentioned in Diario 1921, but Castelao used his visit to the osteol­ ogist as inspiration for a short story included in Cousas. Instead of resorting to the diary as a primary source, Inacio and Suárez adapt the afore­mentioned short story, as one can infer by comparing the description of the osteologist in their text and his appearance in the comic, as well as by the fact that the short story, both in the text and in an illustration, includes a tattoo of a bird with a letter in its beak.60 This complex network of references not only echoes the palimpsestuous nature of the adapted text, as discussed above, but also the very essence of comics as a system, following Groensteen’s assertion.61 Drawing on Armelle Blin-Rolland’s work on Régis ­L oisel’s comics adaptation of Peter Pan that links Groensteen’s and Sanders’s theorisations of the network, I suggest that the view that ‘the comic functions as a network itself, engaging the reader in a translinear and plurivectoral reading’ can also be applied to the biographical genre.62 In this regard, graphic biographies mul­ tiply such translinearity and plurivectorality, as not only can the biographical comic be read as a network, but the biographical text

54 Loureiro, ‘70 anos’, 5. 55 Benton, Literary Biography, 30–34. 56 Castelao, Diario 1921 [Diary 1921], ed. Xosé Filgueira Valverde (Vigo: Galaxia, 1977), 84–85. 57 Castelao, Cousas [Things] (1926; repr., Vigo: Galaxia, 2007). 58 Castelao, Diario 1921, 84. 59 Inacio and Suárez, O pobre tolo, 13. 60 Castelao, Cousas, 38. 61 Thierry Groensteen, The System of Comics, trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007). 62 Armelle Blin-Rolland, ‘Re-inventing the Origins of the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up: Régis Loisel’s Peter Pan’, Studies in Comics 5, no. 2 (2014), 275–292 (275).

Illustration 4.6. Inacio and Iván Suárez, Atila (Santiago de Compostela: Demo Editorial, 2015), 36–37. Castelao dreams that he fights against his own graphic representation of ‘the Fascists’ God’ as drawn in Galicia mártir (1937). Reproduced with the kind permission of Manuel Cráneo and Demo Editorial.

98 David Miranda-Barreiro



From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth 99

(similarly to the adapted text) can also be understood as the result of a multiplicity of interconnected references. Contrary to the graphic biographies previously discussed, Inacio and Suárez’s is mostly told from Castelao’s perspective – often in the form of flashbacks narrated by the artist himself. This strategy ­creates the ­illusion that Castelao is telling his own story, even though he often appears in the panels. Referring to Alison ­Bechdel’s Fun Home (2006), Karin Kukkonen suggests that the presence of the narrator in the images is compatible with a focalisa­ tion in the first person.63 Similarly, it can be argued that Inacio and Suárez’s biography fictionalises C ­ astelao’s perception of his own life, presenting the text almost as an autobiography. This serves the intention of providing a more intimate insight into the character. Dreams and nightmares also recurrently appear throughout all the volumes, and because of these oneiric interludes, the reader can have a deeper understanding of the character Castelao’s fears, concerns and motivations. However, despite the series’ intention to give a more ‘human’ perspective on the artist, the ‘heroic’ and hagio­graphical element is not absent from this biography. Castelao is for example depicted as allegorically fighting against political corruption,64 and fascism (Illustration 4.6).65 The series therefore contributes to both consolidating and perpetuating the mytholo­ gisation of Castelao as a national hero and as the embodiment of Galicia’s struggles for the next generations of readers.

Conclusion Today, Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao remains the most iconic twentieth-century figure in Galician culture and politics. Such a view of the Galician artist, writer and politician results from a pro­ cess of mythologisation to which banda deseñada has contributed since its emergence in the 1970s. Castelao embodied anti-fascist values and ­Galicia’s struggles for the new comic artists, whose work was marked by the repressive conditions of Francoism. His towering status in G ­ alician c­ ulture and society and his pioneering graphic work explain recurrent references to him in their work, and the appearance of graphic biographies about his life. Borrowing Benton’s term, I have described these comics as ‘biomythographies’ in which Castelao is approached from an almost hagiographical 63 Karin Kukkonen, Studying Comics and Graphic Novels (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 59. 64 Inacio and Suárez, Titoán, 29 65 Inacio and Suárez, Atila, 36–40.

100

David Miranda-Barreiro

perspective, sometimes portrayed as a Galician hero. At the same time, these comics evince a clear didactic function (often aimed at children) which also serves to educate young readers about this key historical figure. Castelao’s mythologisation and the afore­ mentioned educational approach taken by comics authors can be explained within the context of the efforts to recuperate a part of ­Galician history that had been repressed since 1936. All the examined graphic biographies incorporate Castelao’s own artistic work into their panels (either reproduced directly or emulated). This recurrence of self-referential images shows the awareness that Galician comic artists have of Castelao’s graphic productions, and it works as a tribute to his influence and pio­ neering role. In this regard, I have discussed the palimpsestuous essence of biographies and how they can be compared both to adaptations and to the view of comics as a network or a system. Similarly, these comics create a network of references to Castelao’s own artwork. The insertion of his cartoons and prints into comics created decades after his death also contributes to the idea of re­ storing the lost continuity in Galician comic art. Furthermore, the comics establish a visual dialogue amongst themselves. Although it was not possible to do this in this chapter, one could map similar­ ities between panels (and even how whole anecdotes are depicted) throughout these works. Therein lies another network that could be studied in a future analysis of Galician graphic biographies of Castelao.

David Miranda-Barreiro is a Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Bangor University (Wales), and co-editor of Galicia 21: Journal of Contemporary Galician Studies. He specialises in travel writ­ ing, narratives of mobility, migration, exile, and comics in both ­Galician and Spanish. His monograph, Spanish New York Narratives: Modernization, Otherness and Nation (2014), examines the representation of US society in early twentieth-century Spanish literature. He co-­organised the conference ‘Comics and Nation’ (Bangor University, 2017) and (with Armelle Blin-Rolland) co-­ edited the ­homonymous special issue for Studies in Comics (2019).

Chapter 5

The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics Remembering the Civil War and Francoism in Panels Juan Carlos Pérez García

Introduction: ‘I Saw It’ As Hillary Chute points out, the graphic representation of the ‘disasters of war’ constitutes a broad tradition that can be traced back at least to Jacques Callot’s Les Grandes Misères de la guerre (1633), a series of captioned prints on the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, and Francisco Goya’s Los Desastres de la guerra (1810–1815), a series of etchings with captions influenced by Callot and caricaturists like William Hogarth. With the famous caption ‘Yo lo vi’ [I saw it] (plate 44), Goya tell us that the artist witnessed the disaster, and his work is a visual ­document of what happened, ‘regardless of whether or not he himself was an eyewitness’.1 1 Hillary Chute, Disaster Drawn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 58.

102

Juan Carlos Pérez García

Comics have also been part of that graphic tradition, especially since the second half of the twentieth century. There are wellknown graphic novels such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1980–1991), Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (2000–2003) and Joe Sacco’s journalistic comics about war zones, and more and more testimonial comics of this kind are appearing all over the world. This has notably been the case in Spain, especially since the end of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. This chapter attempts to examine the modes of representation of traumatic memory in Spanish comics by comparing several case studies, from testimonial comics based on memory to comics that use reality-based fiction. All of them deal with the Spanish Civil War or the postwar period, the topics most addressed in Spanish comics of traumatic memory. They have all entered ‘into the space of testimonial memory, alluding to the necessity of making visible the invisible and, at the same time, seeking symbolic justice for the protagonists of each work’.2

Conditions for the Memory of Collective Trauma In traumatic memories, we are faced with the representation of events that have caused individual traumas, but our individual memories are nevertheless shaped by a social fabric, or a ‘collective memory’, according to Maurice Halbwachs. As individuals, we remember not only alone (personal memory) but also within groups (social/collective memory), whose narratives shape our memories and those of the other individuals who are part of these groups.3 Thus, in collective trauma we speak of individual traumas, different but shared through narratives about experiences such as the Holocaust, the Gulag, the Second World War or the ‘rehearsal’ for the Second World War, the Spanish Civil War. The very nature of traumatic events prevents survivors from assimilating the original event and then recounting it coherently:4 the story of trauma ‘as the

2 Ana Merino and Brittany Tullis, ‘The Sequential Art of Memory: The Testimonial Struggle of Comics in Spain’, Hispanic Issues On Line 11 (2012): 211–225 (212). 3 Maurice Halbwachs, La memoria colectiva (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2004), 53–55. 4 Sarah D. Harris, ‘Trauma y tebeo: Representación del pasado violento en la novela gráfica española’ [Trauma and comics: Representation of the violent past in the Spanish graphic novel], in Pensar con la historia desde el siglo XXI: XII Congreso de la Asociación de Historia Contemporánea, ed. Pilar Folguera, Juan Carlos Pereira, Carmen García, Jesús Izquierdo, Rubén Pallol, Raquel Sánchez, Carlos Sanz, Pilar Toboso (Madrid: Ediciones de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2015), 6025–6045 (6103).



The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics 103

narrative of a belated experience’.5 In collective trauma, a rupture of the basic fabric of social life also interrupts the sense of community, especially in a civil war. After a violent conflict, the stages for recovery in the community are related to those of an individual trauma: the restoration of physical and emotional security, then testimony and remembrance aloud and finally social reintegration.6 These successive phases partially explain the delay of many years in the public narratives of collective traumas, a phenomenon that happened not only in the case of the Spanish Civil War. For instance, the Holocaust was not a topic of public conversation at least until the 1960s; the decisive cultural turn did not culminate until the late 1970s, preceding the ‘memorialist turn’7 and the ‘age of testimony’ with its ‘crisis of truth’.8 Even if the conditions of freedom and physical security are restored, and it is therefore possible to ‘speak’ in public about what happened, there are two added problems: how to represent the traumatic event, and the social context within which to be able to do so. Testimonial images only make a dent in public opinion if there is ‘an appropriate context of feeling and attitude’.9 Moreover, public remembrance of traumatic events tends to occur some twenty-­ five years after the events, once the next generation has grown to adulthood. The delay in such public debates also has much to do with political interests: those who experience traumas such as war only see their narratives enter the public realm if their vision fits the objectives and sociopolitical tendencies of other relevant social groups.10 Bearing this in mind, historical memory is the memory that a community has of its own history.11

5 Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 7. 6 Harris, ‘Trauma y tebeo’, 6105–6106. 7 Andreas Huyssen, En busca del futuro perdido [In search of the lost future] (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2002), 26. All translations in this chapter are my own unless otherwise indicated. 8 Shoshana Felman, ‘Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching’, in Testimony, ed. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (New York: Routledge, 1992), 1–56 (5–6). 9 Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Rosetta Books, 2005), 12. 10 See Joanna Bourke, ‘Trauma, Memory’, in Dark Is the Room Where We Sleep / Oscura es la habitación donde dormimos, by Francesc Torres (Barcelona: Actar, 2007), 154–167 (157). 11 See Paloma Aguilar, Memoria y olvido de la guerra civil española [Remembering and forgetting the Spanish Civil War] (Madrid: Alianza, 1996), 31–42.

104

Juan Carlos Pérez García

Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics With the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), the most common source of collective trauma featured in Spanish comics, not only did the community suffer from these ruptures in the basic social fabric, but also, for a long time, a public forum could not be created for exposing and debating them, for remembering and healing them.12 The Spanish Civil War, unlike the Second World War, did not result in the demise of fascism. After victory and the very violent repression of the defeated, Franco’s dictatorship secluded the memory of the war within the private sphere, denying it a public space for free discussion and imposing an official discourse that excluded the version of events as recounted by the defeated, who were thus condemned to shame and fear.13 During the Spanish Transition to democracy (1975–1982), political agreements included a pact of amnesty and tacit silence for the sake of national reconciliation, a silence limited to the political arena, because society and the media began initiatives to revise the historiography and cultural hegemony of Francoism.14 Therefore, there has been an added delay in creating a public forum for discussing the traumatic events in Spain. The first important Spanish comic on the subject of traumatic memory is Carlos Giménez’s Paracuellos (1976– ). This is a pioneering work in Spain, as much a historical memory of Francoist Spain as an adult and autobiographical comic, which began serial publication at the very beginning of the Transition, even before the 1978 Spanish Constitution. In Paracuellos, the Civil War is the ‘presence of an absence’.15 It is never represented directly, but its spectrum is always present because everything seems to be a direct consequence of it: hunger and misery, the hypocritical rhetoric of the victors, the cruel techniques deployed to repress the defeated. Paracuellos is a testimony of Giménez’s childhood (b. 1941) in the Francoist Hogares de Auxilio Social [social assistance homes], which housed children of ‘red’ parents who had been shot or imprisoned, or whose relatives were too poor to take care of them. ‘Paracuellos’ was the nickname of the Hogar located in Para­cuellos de Jarama near Madrid. These ‘orphans of the Civil War’ were in 12 Harris, ‘Trauma y tebeo’, 6102–6103. 13 See Carme Molinero, ‘¿Memoria de la represión o memoria del franquismo? [Memory of the repression or memory of Francoism?]’, in Memoria de la guerra y del franquismo [Memory of the war and Francoism], ed. Santos Juliá (Madrid: Taurus, 2006), 219–246; Paul Preston, El holocausto español (Barcelona: DeBolsillo, 2013), 615–678. 14 Aguilar, Memoria y olvido, 261–354. 15 Paul Virilio, Estética de la desaparición [Aesthetics of disappearance] (Barcelona: Anagrama, 1988), 24.



The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics 105

doctrinated into Francoist Nationalist Catholicism and suffered constant abuse, mistreatment and deprivation. Paracuellos is based on the author’s memories but also on the anecdotal accounts of his former fellow inmates in these homes, recorded in group meetings. When the first Paracuellos comic strips were published, its publisher had doubts about the project. Serious comics were unusual in Spain and its subject was ‘a very depressing thing’,16 so the publisher opted to stop publishing the series. Conceivably, it was still too early to remember the trauma, and an appropriate social context was lacking. Giménez continued the series in other Spanish publications and in the French magazine Fluide Glacial, gaining prestige over the years. The first Paracuellos comic strips are brief: anecdotes of two pages with no real plot because of editorial restrictions on space (Illustration 5.1). The author draws characters in a very expressive style of realistic ­caricature, unequivocally subjective, with schematic backgrounds that shun preciousness because those Francoist homes were ugly, as the author has explained, and in very small panels that allow a more nuanced narration.17 In those first episodes, Giménez indicates the time and place in which the stories occurred, to give the work a documentary-l­ike appearance. Over time, he developed recurring characters and larger narrative arcs, so the series went from a testimony of complaint to an emotional history.18 Paracuellos has been extended into the twenty-first century: Todo Paracuellos was compiled from the first six albums in 2007,19 a few months before the Ley de Memoria Histórica [Historical Memory Law] was passed,20 which fuelled the public debate on ­Francoist repression; two new albums were published in 2016 and 2017.21 Today, Paracuellos occupies a privileged place in Spanish comics and historical memory as a condemnation of the ‘systematic violence and social 16 According to Giménez, interviewed by David Muñoz and Antonio Trashorras, ‘Carlos Giménez’, U 9 (1998): 20–63 (43). 17 Ibid., 45. 18 Santiago García, Cómics sensacionales (Barcelona: Larousse, 2015), 104. 19 Carlos Giménez, Todo Paracuellos (Barcelona: DeBolsillo, 2007). 20 ‘Ley 52/2007, de 26 de diciembre, por la que se reconocen y amplían derechos y se establecen medidas en favor de quienes padecieron persecución o violencia durante la guerra civil y la dictadura’ [Law 52/2007, of 26 December, by which rights are recognised and extended and measures are established in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence during the civil war and the dictatorship], Boletín Oficial del Estado 310 (27 December 2007): 53410–53416, https:// www.boe.es/buscar/doc.php?id=BOE-A-2007-22296. 21 Carlos Giménez, Paracuellos 7: Hombres del mañana [Paracuellos 7: Men of tomorrow] (Barcelona: Reservoir Books, 2016); Carlos Giménez, Paracuellos 8: Las madres no tienen la culpa [Paracuellos 8: Mothers are not to blame] (Barcelona: Reservoir Books, 2017).

106

Juan Carlos Pérez García

Illustration 5.1. Carlos Giménez, ‘Noche de Reyes’ (1977), reprinted in ­Paracuellos 1 (Barcelona: Glénat, 2000), 10 (© Carlos Giménez, reproduced with kind permission of the author).



The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics 107

division of the Franco years’.22 It has also been a crucial reference for later cartoonists. Giménez expanded his ‘autobiographical-­ collective’ memory of postwar Spain, this time outside the Franco­ ist homes, in Barrio [Neighbourhood] (1977–2007).23

Memory versus History With Eloy (1979), Antonio Hernández Palacios (1921–2000) began a series of albums that approached the Spanish Civil War directly.24 Palacios was a communist who had fought on the Republican side; the narrative perspective in Eloy is also communist, but the moderation of its political discourse is striking. Michael Matly attributes this to the author’s concerns about the controversial legalisation of the Communist Party of Spain and its precarious situation at the time.25 This reminds us of the first condition for the public recall of trauma: physical and emotional security must be assured. It is significant that Palacios’s approach is neither autobiographical nor testimonial, and claims to be historical (Eloy was published in the collection Imágenes de la historia and is certainly well documented). In 1979, the few autobiographical comics published around the world were virtually unknown. Palacios therefore resorts to some conventions of commercial comics: characters without psychology; and a ‘transparent’ protagonist, the young militiaman Eloy, who ‘has adventures’ while meeting ‘notable historical figures’ (Republicans such as Major Líster, La Pasionaria, Durruti, etc.). Palacios, a good commercial artist, uses an ‘overloaded’ illustration style and a narrative that can be understood just by reading the caption texts, with dialogue that is of little relevance (Illustration 5.2). The narrative style recalls Harold Foster’s Prince Valiant (1937– 1980), a fantasy of medieval adventures. Indeed, realism in comic sequences is paradoxical: it creates a distancing estrangement and tends to mythify what is represented; in comics, realist drawing seems unreal.26 Never­theless, Palacio’s approach was intended to be historical at a time of new democratic freedoms when adult comics 22 Merino and Tullis, ‘The Sequential Art of Memory’, 218. 23 Four albums collected in Carlos Giménez, Todo Barrio (Barcelona: DeBolsillo, 2011). 24 Antonio Hernández Palacios, Eloy (Vitoria: Ikusager, 1979); Eloy: Río Manzanares (Vitoria: Ikusager, 1979); 1936: Euskadi en llamas (Vitoria: Ikusager, 1981); Gorka Gudari (Vitoria: Ikusager, 1987). 25 Michel Matly, ‘El cómic español y la guerra civil: Transición y primera década de democracia (1976–1992)’ [Spanish comics and the civil war: Transition and the first decade of democracy], Tebeosfera, 12 (2014). 26 See Stuart Medley, ‘Discerning Pictures: How We Look at and Understand Images in Comics’, Studies in Comics 1, no. 1 (2010): 53–70.

108

Juan Carlos Pérez García

Illustration 5.2. Antonio Hernández Palacios, Eloy: Río Manzanares (­Vitoria: ­Ikusager, 1979), 50 (© Antonio Hernández Palacios, reproduced with kind permission of the publisher Amiran Reuveni).



The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics 109

emerged in Spain and comics claimed to be a serious medium. But, as Santos Juliá reminds us, while history seeks to know, understand and interpret, acting under the requirement of totality and objectivity, memory endeavours to legiti­mise, rehabilitate, honour or condemn, and always acts in a selective and subjective manner.27 When the Spanish far-right party Fuerza Nueva published in 1978 a comic to extol the fascist resistance during the Siege of the Alcázar (1936), it was drawn with the same realistic pretensions. Carlos Fresno and Luis Fresno’s Setenta días en el infierno: La gesta del Alcázar de Toledo [Seventy days in hell: The heroic feat of the Alcázar of Toledo] is one of the first Spanish comics that approaches the Civil War after Franco’s death and pursues the mythification and the ideological indoctrination of young readers right from the prologue.28 As Matly suggests, this comic fitted the new Spanish historiography of the late Francoism of the 1960s and avoided some excesses of the previous propaganda although it maintained ­Francoist narratives.29

Modes of Graphic Representation of Traumatic Memory Why is there so much difference between the textual-visual narrative of Paracuellos and Eloy, and what different effects do they produce in the reader? This question leads us to consider the comics’ modes of representation, a crucial issue in relation to traumatic memories due to the inevitable conflict between memory, history and myth that this kind of work creates. For instance, the effect of unreality and epic-­sentimental banalisation in the search for mimesis and ‘history’ of Eloy is one that Art Spiegelman wanted to avoid in Maus. When Spiegelman confronted the horrors of the Holocaust in his famous graphic novel, his main problem was that of representation: how to translate into the image-text of comics the oral narrative of his father, an Auschwitz survivor, full of gaps and dependent on memory. The author was aware of the risk of trivialisation at a time when the Holocaust had still been barely represented in mass media.30 Spiegelman found his strategy of representation in a self-conscious narration in which the author himself is included: a mise en abyme that questions the creative process and the truth of memory, and a conceptual drawing with a 27 Santos Juliá, ‘Presentación’, in Juliá, Memoria de la guerra, 15–26 (17). 28 Blas Piñar, ‘Prólogo’, in Setenta días en el infierno: La gesta del Alcázar de Toledo, by Carlos Fresno and Luis Fresno (Madrid: Fuerza Nueva Editorial, 1978). 29 Matly, ‘El cómic español y la guerra civil’. 30 Art Spiegelman, MetaMaus (London: Viking, 2011), 44–48.

Illustration 5.3. Francisco Gallardo Sarmiento and Miguel Gallardo, Un largo silencio (Alicante: De Ponent, 1997), cover, 30–31 (© Miguel Gallardo, reproduced with kind permission of the author).

110 Juan Carlos Pérez García



The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics 111

high degree of symbolism. It is a cartoon representation that incites the reader to imagine a much greater and overwhelming reality, so often described as ‘unimaginable’. In order to know, you have to imagine. As Luis Puelles points out, to understand means to understand with the imagination.31 Understanding is active. To imagine is to make a ‘mental picture’, so the more symbolic and indirect modes of representation seem more appropriate to activate this understanding imagination. As Georges Didi-­Huberman stated: ‘In order to know, we must imagine for ourselves. We must attempt to imagine the hell that Auschwitz was in the summer of 1944. Let us not invoke the unimaginable’.32 The symbolic, allusive modes of representation in Maus have inspired the recounting of other traumatic memories in Spanish comics. Un largo silencio [A long silence] (1997) is a distinctive graphic novel consisting of the testimony of Francisco Gallardo (1909–1997) about his poverty-­stricken childhood, his youth during the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), his vicissitudes as a Republican officer during the Spanish Civil War and his struggle to survive after the war. There is a first-person account of the war from a critical point of view: the effect of the fascist bombs on the civilian population, the shooting of prisoners on both sides, the Republican disorganisation, the exile in French concentration camps and the difficult reintegration into the Francoist society for those who, like Francisco Gallardo, lost the war. His voice, that of an older generation, is respected in his idiosyncratic form of writing. His son Miguel Gallardo (b. 1955) illustrates the typographical text with sketches and comic strips in a cartoony style: a schematic, conceptual drawing that often uses visual metaphors typical of graphic illustration, of which he is a renowned master (Illustration 5.3). Miguel Gallardo writes in the prologue: Mi padre estuvo 40 años callado como una tumba [. . .]. Cuando al final abrió la boca, fue para repetir una y otra vez la misma historia. [. . .] Esta es la historia que me contó mi padre una y otra vez, hecha de trozos y retales, de piezas que no encajan, pero que yo sé que es cierta, y así voy a intentar contarla, dándole a mi padre una voz. Una voz que cuenta una parte de la historia cada vez más olvidada, pero que los que la vivieron no la olvidarán jamás.33 31 Luis Puelles, Mirar al que mira [Look at the one who looks] (Madrid: Abada, 2011), 179. 32 Georges Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of All (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 3. 33 Francisco Gallardo and Miguel Ángel Gallardo, Un largo silencio (Alicante: De Ponent, 1997), 5.

112

Juan Carlos Pérez García

[My father was as silent as the grave for 40 years (. . .). When he finally spoke, it was to repeat the same story over and over again. (. . .) This is the story that my father told me over and over, made up of bits and pieces, of pieces that do not fit, but that I know to be true, and so I will try to tell it, giving my father a voice. His is a voice that tells a part of history progressively being forgotten, but that those who lived it will always remember.]

Here we can detect some recurrent symptoms associated with traumatic memories. There is the imperative to tell (‘and thus to come to know one’s story [. . .] in order to be able to live one’s life’)34 and the problem of identity, as well as the absence of physical and emotional security during the dictatorship, which prevented the public narration of trauma (‘a long silence’). There is the notion of generational memory that aspires to be shared, with the intertwining of the voices of the father (writing) and the son (drawings and book concept) in a joint work of generational transmission,35 one that manifests the need to claim for the vanquished like Francisco Gallardo a worthy role in ­Spanish society and history, denied them by the laws and historians of the Franco regime. There is repetition and fragmentation,36 because the trauma is repeated compulsively through its narration and imitates the in­comprehensible form in which it was originally experienced (the traumatic event ‘is not assimilated or experienced fully at the time, but only belatedly, in its repeated possession of the one who experiences it’).37 Un largo silencio has other distinctive features: the first-person text in a typewriter font, the book design like a 1940s notebook and the inclusion of photographs and personal documents to seal the autobiographical pact of the truthfulness of the story38 all produce the effect of making a representation of the past seem an artefact

34 Dori Laub, ‘An Event without a Witness: Truth, Testimony and Survival’, in Felman and Laub, Testimony, 75–92 (78). 35 Evelyn Hafter, ‘Representaciones del pasado en una novela gráfica sobre la guerra civil española: Memorias en conflicto en Un largo silencio, de F. Gallardo Sarmiento y M. A. Gallardo’ [Representations of the past in a graphic novel about the Spanish Civil War: Memories in conflict in Un largo silencio, by F. Gallardo Sarmiento and M. Gallardo], paper presented at the First Congreso Internacional de Historietas Viñetas Sueltas (Madrid, 2010). 36 Harris, ‘Trauma y tebeo’, 6107. 37 Cathy Caruth, ‘Introduction’, Trauma, ed. Cathy Caruth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 3–12 (4). 38 Benoît Mitaine, ‘Memorias dibujadas: La representación de la guerra civil y del franquismo en el cómic español – El caso de Un largo silencio’ [Memoirs drawn: The representation of the civil war and Franco in Spanish comics – The case of Un largo silencio], in Memoria y testimonio, ed. Georges Tyras and Juan Vila (Madrid: Verbum, 2012),148–167 (158).



The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics 113

of that past, reducing the distance between experience and its representation as a story.39 Miguel Gallardo, already an outstanding Spanish cartoonist when he started this project, had begun in the Spanish underground comix of the 1970s. However, Un largo silencio went un­ noticed in the year of its original publication, pointing perhaps to a certain lack of adequate sensitivity in public awareness (the debate on historical memory would not be fully reopened until the early 2000s)40 and a lack of medium/market for a graphic novel in Spain at the time. Its pioneering hybrid format was not understood then: a cultural artefact between picture books and comics that did not fit into the still unreceptive publishing landscape. In 1997, the traditional Spanish comics industry was almost extinct,41 and the new graphic novel model did not emerge until the mid-2000s on the circuit of generalist bookstores.42 By 2012, this model did exist, when a new, expanded and better-received edition was released with more comic strips and additional documentation.43 Un largo silencio, like Maus, was created after a traumatic event by a generation that only had experiences of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War through representations, images and stories, in this case of their own relatives. This is what Marianne Hirsch calls ‘post-memory’:44 ‘an intersubjective transgenerational space of remembrance, linked specifically to cultural or collective trauma’ and defined through an identification ‘with the victim or witness of trauma, modulated by the unbridgeable distance that separates the participant from the one born after’.45 39 Hafter, ‘Representaciones del pasado’. 40 On the debate on the Francoist repression, spurred on in the early 2000s by the generation of the ‘grandchildren of war’ with parliamentary measures and civil activities like those of the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (founded in December 2000), see Santos Juliá, ‘Memoria, historia y política de un pasado de guerra y dictadura’, in Juliá, Memoria de la guerra, 27–77 (71–77); Paloma Aguilar, ‘La evocación de la guerra y del franquismo en la política, la cultura y la sociedad españolas’, in Juliá, Memoria de la guerra, 279–317 (284–287). 41 Especially after the bankruptcy in 1982 of the last big publisher of Spanish popular comic books (Editorial Bruguera) and the closure of dozens of comic magazines (Totem, Cairo, Zona 84 and many others) between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s. See Antonio Altarriba, La españa del tebeo (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 2001), 310–327. 42 See Santiago García, La novela gráfica (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2010), 215, 263–264. 43 Francisco Gallardo and Miguel Gallardo, Un largo silencio (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2012). 44 Marianne Hirsch, ‘Family Pictures: Maus, Mourning, and Post-memory’, Discourse 15, no. 2 (1992–1993): 3–29 (8). 45 Marianne Hirsch, ‘Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory’, Yale Journal of Criticism 14, no. 1 (2001): 5–37 (10).

114

Juan Carlos Pérez García

Another example of post-memory in Spanish comics is Antonio Altarriba and Kim’s El arte de volar [The art of flying] (2009).46 Both El arte de volar and Un largo silencio are based on the oral and written memory of the authors’ fathers. Unlike Un largo silencio, El arte de volar arrived at a more propitious time: in 2009, there was already a Spanish graphic novel market in which comics of testimony played an important role, and the 2007 Historical Memory Law had relaunched the public debate on the Francoist repression. El arte de volar won the most important comic awards in Spain (including the National Comics Award, given out annually by the Ministry of Culture since 2007) and has been published in many countries. El arte de volar combines testimony, historical memory and auto-­fiction in a story about the failure of the left-wing ideals of the Spanish Republic. It tells the life of Antonio Altarriba Lope (1910–2001), a poor peasant who embraced the ideals of Anarcho-­ syndicalism and moved to the Republican front; after the Civil War, he led a life truncated by exile in France and the humiliating return to Francoist Spain in 1949. Subsequently, he suffered long periods of depression and finally committed suicide in a nursing home. The work is also a family memoir in which the son, the scriptwriter Altarriba (b. 1952, scholar of comics and author himself since the 1980s) literally assumes the voice of the father, articulated with interior monologue in captions (Illustration 5.4). Thus, El arte de volar starts from a double trauma: the original trauma of the father and that of the son, who, tormented by the guilt of not being able to prevent his father’s suicide, writes the script as catharsis. The artist Kim (b. 1941), well known for his satirical comic strip about old Francoists Martínez el Facha (1977– ) represents the story with an expressive realist caricature rooted not only in the underground comix of the 1970s but also, like the work of other Spanish underground cartoonists, in the commercial tebeos of the 1950s,47 such as Juan García Iranzo’s El cachorro (1951–1959). In this way, his graphic style refers implicitly to the postwar period remembered. The picture does not attempt to set itself up with realistic illusionism, and often adopts a metaphorical language that contrasts text and image, leaving the reader to complete the production of meaning (Illustration 5.5). Altarriba expanded his family memoir, again with Kim, in El ala rota [The broken wing] (2016), a biography of his mother that covers the entire twentieth century in Spain.48 46 Antonio Altarriba and Kim, El arte de volar (Alicante: De Ponent, 2009). 47 García, Cómics sensacionales, 224. 48 Antonio Altarriba and Kim, El ala rota (Barcelona: Norma, 2016).



The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics 115

Illustration 5.4. Antonio Altarriba and Kim, El arte de volar (Alicante: De Ponent, 2009), 13 (© Antonio Altarriba and Kim, reproduced with kind permission of the authors).

116

Juan Carlos Pérez García

Illustration 5.5. Antonio Altarriba and Kim, El arte de volar (Alicante: De Ponent, 2009), 93 (© Antonio Altarriba and Kim, reproduced with kind permission of the authors).



The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics 117

In any discussion of the relationships between fiction, genre ­ ction and nonfiction, the creative process of Paco Roca’s Los surcos fi del azar [Twists of Fate] (2013) must be considered.49 When Roca (b. 1969) c­ onceived the project, he was already an established author thanks to graphic novels like the bestseller Arrugas [Wrinkles] (2007, National Comics Award of 2008) and had already addressed the memory of the Spanish Civil War and postwar in El faro [The lighthouse] (2004), El invierno del dibujante [The artist’s winter] (2010) and El ángel de la retirada [The angel of the retreat] (2010). His initial approach for Los surcos del azar was to tell a story of ‘adventures in the Second World War’, in the style of films like Kelly’s Heroes (Bran G. Hutton, 1970) and I­ nglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009) but featuring Spanish Republican members of La Nueve – the division composed of exiled Spanish soldiers that participated in the liberation of Paris in 1944. However, the task of documentation and his meeting with Republican veterans led him to change his approach. As Roca explained to me in an interview in 2014, he found it more interesting to strip away the myth that surrounds La Nueve and to use a documentary tone that would allow him to depict the historical context with realism. Roca then obtained the advice of the historian Robert Coale and a group of experts on military equipment. Thus, from ‘warlike exploits’ he went on to memory, history and testimony, a field in which Giménez’s Paracuellos and Spiegelman’s Maus were two crucial references. The start of Los surcos del azar, showing the trauma of the Republican defeat in the Civil War, is not fortuitous. The apocalyptic initial scene recreates the chaotic escape of the Republicans from the Port of Alicante in the last days of the war, with thousands of refugees trying to escape on the crowded British coal ship Stanbrook while the fascist troops are about to take the city. Then, Roca depicts himself travelling in the present time frame to interview a Spanish veteran of La Nueve, exiled in France since the end of the Second World War: a man em­bittered by his memories, frustrated at having participated in the liberation of France but not having been able to liberate his own country from fascism. The alternation of past and present is represented by different visual styles: the present in greys with a looser drawing style, as in a notebook; the past (the end of Civil War, the fight of Republicans in the African front of the Second World War and the liberation of France) is represented in colours and bold-stroked drawings (Illustration 5.6). 49 Paco Roca, Los surcos del azar (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2013).

Illustration 5.6. Paco Roca, Los surcos del azar (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2013), 34–35 (© Paco Roca, reproduced with kind permission of the author).

118 Juan Carlos Pérez García



The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics 119

Thus, the past is ‘closed’, already marked in memory, and the present seems spectral, less real. In fact, the interview with the veteran is fictitious. He is a composite character inspired by several true S ­ panish combatants of La Nueve, like Miguel Campos, a former member of the Durruti Column, and Lieutenant Amado Granell. The work is also based on experiences of Republicans exiled in France whom Roca interviewed during the making of El ángel de la retirada,50 a graphic novel about Spanish refugees in French camps at the end of the Civil War, which is also narrated as an investigation of the past from the standpoint of the present. As Ana Merino and Brittany Tullis claim, ‘the necessity to remember from the present and to evoke past events alludes to the quest for visibility that is so central to the space of memory’.51 However, the breaking of the autobiographical pact of truth,52 which involves the author interviewing a fictitious protagonist, does not mean that Roca is lying to us, since he did interview several real Republicans. It is not easy to trace the line separating the mythic past from the real past, a problem inherent in any memory. As Andreas Huyssen points out, the real can be mythologised, just as the mythical can engender strong effects of reality, and memory is never free of fictional moments but is still tied to a real, not at all fictional, event.53 It should be noted that the history of La Nueve was largely silenced during F ­ ranco’s dictator­ship for obvious reasons and is still little known in Spain today. In fact, the ‘recreated memory’,54 as it is called, of Los surcos del azar has contributed to its retrieval from the oblivion imposed by Francoism. Oblivion, to put it in Freudian terms, is hidden memory. For the same reason, the spot where the old Málaga-Almería road in Spain starts was officially renamed in 2006 by the Málaga City Council (controlled by the conservative Partido Popular) ‘Paseo de los canadienses’ [Promenade of the Canadians], after the Canadian doctor Norman Bethune who attended the numerous refugees injured on that road in February 1937. The locals, at least those who remember the massacre that took place there during the Civil War, instead call it ‘la carretera de la muerte’ [death road]. When fascist troops occupied Málaga, tens of thousands of civilian 50 Serguei Dounovetz and Paco Roca, El ángel de la retirada [The angel of retreat] (Barcelona: Bang, 2010). 51 Merino and Tullis, ‘The Sequential Art of Memory’, 223. 52 See Philippe Lejeune, Le pacte autobiographique (Paris: Seuil, 1975). 53 Huyssen, En busca del futuro perdido, 21, 140. 54 David Fernández de Arriba, ‘La memoria del exilio a través del cómic: Un largo silencio, El arte de volar y Los surcos del azar’ [The memory of exile through comics], CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic 4 (2015): 7–33 (17–18).

120

Juan Carlos Pérez García

refugees fled along that coastal road to the Republican zone in fear of retaliation (a panic fuelled by the ­Nationalists themselves on the media). All along the way, the mass of refugees, entire families with children and elderly relatives, were attacked by Nationalist ships and Italian planes, which killed an estimated three thousand to five thousand people.55 Indeed, before the Second World War, fascist tactics of extermination were tried out in the Spanish Civil War. It may be surprising that a war crime of such magnitude is still so little known, compared to the bombing of Guernica, with about 150 to 300 dead, but also understandable, since there was no opportunity to remember and report that slaughter through narratives during the dictatorship. Less understandable is that it remained so unknown in 2006.56 The commemorative plaque, erected that year, is eloquent because, using a Canadian doctor as a pretext, it attempts to disguise the carnage that remains un­ mentioned (emphasis added): PASEO DE LOS CANADIENSES En memoria de la ayuda que el pueblo de Canadá, de la mano de Norman Bethune, prestó a los malagueños fugitivos en febrero de 1937. [PROMENADE OF THE CANADIANS In memory of the help that the people of Canada, by the hand of Norman Bethune, provided to fugitive people of Málaga in February of 1937.]

Historiography documented this war crime years ago, but popular narratives that would publicise it are lacking, and it does not have a cultural icon like Picasso’s Guernica to give it worldwide resonance. Only in the past decade have some events and tributes begun to resituate it in public memory through the exhibition Norman Bethune (2004) and the multimedia project Málaga 1937 (2007).57

55 See Lucía Prieto and Encarnación Barranquero, Población y guerra civil en Málaga [Populations and civil war in Málaga] (Málaga: Centro de Ediciones de la Diputación de Málaga, 2007), 146–209; Preston, El holocausto español, 251–252; Andrés ­Fernández and María Isabel Brenes, 1937: Éxodo Málaga Almería (Málaga: Aratispi, 2016), 256–297; Miguel Ángel Melero, ‘Guerra y éxodo a Almería’ [War and exodus to Almería], in Yo estaba allí [I was there], ed. Fernando Arcas (Málaga: Ediciones del Genal, 2016), 75–92. 56 See Jesús Majada and Fernando Bueno, Carretera Málaga-Almería (Febrero de 1937) [Málaga-Amería highway (February 1937)] (Benalmádena: Caligrama, 2006), 9–11. 57 See Norman Bethune and Jesús Majada, El crimen de la carretera Málaga-Almería [The crime of the Málaga-Amería highway] (Benalmádena: Caligrama, 2004); Rogelio López Cuenca, Málaga 1937 (2007), http://www.malaga1937.net.



The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics 121

Carlos Guijarro has also contributed to this project of memorialisation with Paseo de los canadienses.58 A historian and a non-­ professional comics author, Guijarro (b. 1955) drew inspiration from Art Spiegel­man and Joe Sacco to create his first graphic novel, starting from a historio­graphical investigation that began after his discovery of the aforementioned plaque (Illustration 5.7). He also visually distinguishes two narrative time frames but in a more orthodox manner: the present is represented in a wide spectrum of colours; the traumatic past in a monochrome sepia that safeguards the mourning of memory, because in the collective imagination of future generations, the Civil War ­happened in black and white.59

Illustration 5.7. Carlos Guijarro, Paseo de los canadienses (Alicante: De Ponent, 2015), 12, 110 (© Carlos Guijarro, reproduced with kind permission of the author). Left: the character who will investigate the Málaga-­ Almería road massacre discovers the plaque put in place in 2006 by the Málaga City Council. Right: the past is represented in sepia; Dr Norman Bethune appears in the first panel. In the last panel, a survivor of the slaughter confesses her fear of talking about it: ‘I know that what is not reported is like it has never happened, that’s why I’ve had so many regrets these years, but since I was so afraid . . .’ 58 Carlos Guijarro, Paseo de los canadienses [Promenade of the Canadians] (Alicante: De Ponent, 2015). 59 Ivan Rodrigues Martin, ‘As linhas de força do romance gráfico sobre a guerra civil espanhola’ [The power lines of the graphic novel about the Spanish Civil War], Caracol 11 (2016): 176–209 (186).

122

Juan Carlos Pérez García

Conclusions: Solidarity as Imagination If public memory of collective traumas involves a delay of about twenty-­five years for the reasons already examined the debate was delayed in the case of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime for another two decades by the dictatorship. Francoism imposed a hegemonic discourse in which its legitimacy of origin came precisely from the war: Franco had ‘saved Spain’ after his uprising against the Second Republic and the military victory of 1939. The Francoist policy of memory demonised the Second Republic as a period of ‘chaos and revolution’ and presented Franco as the ‘guarantor of peace and order’, within a regime of great repressive brutality that during the postwar period sought the elimination or purge of its political opponents and a strict social control in which there were no spaces for dissidence. With the end of the dictatorship and the establishment of democracy, conflicting memories were manifested with increasing intensity from the 1980s,60 as new testimonies of the vanquished were spread through books, films, exhibitions and comics. If the memory of the Civil War was present throughout the Tran­sition (1975–1982), the political pacts of which were determined by the desire for ‘never again’ and by a tacit silence (especially about the dictator­ship) for the sake of national reconciliation, the debate on F ­ rancoist repression, its mass graves and tens of thousands of missing persons was not fully addressed until the 2000s. The debate was driven by various parliamentary initiatives, which led to the controversial 2007 Historical Memory Law, and by the activities of civil collectives such as the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica and visual artists such as Francesc Torres,61 among others. Regarding Spanish comics, one of the first to address the memory of Francoism was Paracuellos, by Carlos Giménez, a pioneering work in Spain of both adult and autobiographical comics and historical memory, published very early in the Transition. With hardly any models to follow, Giménez opted for a symbolic representation style – a cartoony, subjective style – which expressed 60 See Molinero, ‘¿Memoria de la represión?’ 240–246. 61 Francesc Torres collaborated in 2004 with the Association for the Recuperation of the Historical Memory to document the excavation of a mass grave from the Spanish Civil War in the Burgos area. His work led to the installation Dark Is the Room Where We Sleep (2007), a project funded paradoxically by non-Spanish institutions in the United States. The exhibition was inaugurated at the International Center of Photography (ICP) of New York (September 2007) and only afterwards went to Spain; in fact, the work is now in the ICP permanent collection.



The Representation of Traumatic Memory in Spanish Comics 123

the nature of the issue evoked, a product of memory. By contrast, Hernández Palacios’s Eloy and Carlos Fresno and Luis Fresno’s Setenta días en el infierno addressed the Civil War with pretensions of ‘historical objectivity’ from significantly similar modes of representation – realist drawing to illustrate extensive caption texts – despite the opposing ideologies of their authors: Palacios was a communist Republican who fought in the war; the comic by the Fresno brothers was published by a far-right party. However, in comics sequences, realist drawing seems unreal and tends to mythify what is represented, an effect that Art Spiegelman wanted to avoid specifically in Maus. Two examples of ‘post-memory’ in the Spanish graphic novel, Francisco Gallardo and Miguel Gallardo’s Un largo silencio and Antonio Altarriba and Kim’s El arte de volar, deal with the traumatic memory of the Civil War and Francoism with more symbolic modes of representation: caricature, conceptual drawing, visual metaphors. To know, you have to imagine, so the most allusive and indirect modes of representation seem more appropriate to activate understanding and memory. Paco Roca makes a similar choice in Los surcos del azar, as does Carlos Guijarro in Paseo de los canadienses, in both the drawing styles and the artistic device of interviewing a war survivor (like Spiegelman, or Joe Sacco in his journalistic comics) to evoke through dialogue the details of the collective trauma: the disasters of war one saw. And, as far as possible, to convey one’s testimony to others so that it is not forgotten. All these works aim to make visible, and public, what for decades was invisible in Spain. As Richard Rorty has argued, human solidarity is to be achieved not by inquiry but by imagination: ‘the imaginative ability to see strange people as fellow sufferers’, created ‘by increasing our sensitivity to the particular details of the pain and humiliation’, a task not for theory but for genres such as the journalist’s report, the comic or the novel.62 Examples are the comics examined here, and many others such as Cava and Del Barrio’s El artefacto perverso [The perverse artefact] (1996), ­Sento’s Dr. Uriel (2017), and 36–39: Malos tiempos [36–39: Bad times] (2007–2009), in which Carlos Giménez finally addresses the ­Spanish Civil War. Needless to say, such comics deserve an analysis of their own, as part of a wider research agenda that is every bit as urgent as it is exciting.

62 Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), xvi.

124

Juan Carlos Pérez García

Juan Carlos Pérez García (Pepo Pérez) is an artist and Associate Professor at the University of Málaga. He has been visiting scholar at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and artist-in-residence at La Maison des Auteurs, Angoulême. His artistic work has focused on comics such as the graphic novel series El Vecino (2004 onwards, with Santiago García). He has written in journals and collections such as Supercómic (2013), On the Edge of the Panel (2015), and Del Boom al crack (2018). He coordinated the anthology Cómic digital hoy (2016) and curated the exhibition Premio Nacional de Cómic: 10 años (Málaga, 2017–2018).

Chapter 6

‘For He Bestirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’ Depicting the Medieval Reconquista in Modern Spanish Graphic Novels Iain A. MacInnes

The modern perception of Spain is indelibly linked to its medieval past and to the Reconquista.1 The creation of Spain itself is connected in the modern popular consciousness with the ‘reconquest’ of 1492, the final expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula.2 Yet, despite the removal of Muslim power being seen as a cornerstone in S ­ panish h ­ istory, contemporary Spain continues to promote and ­publicise its Muslim past. In part, this is a result of tourism in twentieth-­century Spain, with heritage tourism being 1 Charles Hirschkind, ‘The Contemporary Afterlife of Moorish Spain’, Islam and Public Controversy in Europe, ed. Nilüfer Göle (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 227–240; Mikaela Rogozen-Soltar, ‘Al-Andalus in Andalusia: Negotiating Moorish History and Regional Identity in Southern Spain’, Anthropological Quarterly 80, no. 3 (2007), 863–886. 2 Henry Kamen, Spain’s Road to Empire: The Making of a World Power, 1492–1763 (London: Penguin, 2002).

126

Iain A. MacInnes

particularly prominent.3 From ­castles, to converted mosques, to the architectural glories of the A ­ lhambra, the Muslim past is a key part of the identity that Spain presents to the world.4 Of particular interest are the Moors and Christians festivals that take place throughout Spain, which in some places have been taking place for centuries. Although increasingly for a tourist audience, these festivals remain an important source of local town and village pride, as they portray mythologised and historicised Christians and Muslims against a very obvious medieval backdrop.5 The use of costumes, armour and weaponry associated with the period has been described as ‘a folkloric manifestation that combines religion, ancestral rites, and historic evocations, [and] is a testimony to the Spanish Reconquest epic’.6 It is also an increasingly non-religious and homogenising celebration that ‘captures the racial and cultural crossroads of contemporary Spain; it is a point of convergence where past and present, apprehensions and opportunities meet’.7 At the same time, the link to Spain’s Islamic past is laden with modern cultural and political resonance. The Francoist regime from 1939 to 1975 emphasised images of Spain’s medieval past to align itself explicitly with Castilian success and to legitimise its own ‘reconquest’ of the country.8 Its focus on the success of the Reconquista and its use of Christian symbolism was somewhat ironic, given that Francoist forces included large numbers of Muslim North African troops.9 In post-Franco Spain, the country is facing different issues with regard to its Muslim past and present. Twenty-­ first-century Spain is dealing with a growing Muslim minority as a result of immigration into the country from North Africa.10 As 3 Daniela Flesler and Adrián Pérez Melgosa, ‘Battles of Identity, or Playing “Guest” and “Host”: The Festivals of Moors and Christians in the Context of Moroccan Immigration in Spain’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 4, no. 2 (2003), 151–168 (151). 4 Richard Fletcher, Moorish Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Glaire D. Anderson and Mariam Rosser-Owen, eds, Revisiting Al-Andalus: Perspectives on the Material Culture of Islamic Iberia and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 5 Eva Borreguero, ‘The Moors Are Coming, the Moors Are Coming! Encounters with Muslims in Contemporary Spain’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 17, no. 4 (2006), 417–432 (418, 424–425); Rogozen-Soltar, ‘Al-Andalus in Andalusia’, 863–866, 877–880. 6 Borreguero, ‘The Moors Are Coming’, 418, 422. 7 Ibid., 430. 8 Flora Thomas Ward, ‘Constructing the Cámara Santa: Architecture, History, and Authority in Medieval Oviedo’, unpublished PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2014. 9 Ali Al Tuma, ‘The Participation of Moorish Troops in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39): Military Value, Motivations, and Religious Aspects’, War and Society 30, no. 2 (2011), 91–107. 10 Flesler and Melgosa, ‘Battles of Identity’, 151–168.



‘For He Bestirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’ 127

in other parts of Europe faced with a refugee and migrant influx, cultural friction is on the rise. While the right wing has not historically gained ascendancy in Spain, the recent rise of the populist Vox party shows that, as in other parts of Europe, such tensions have had a political response.11 While the topic of immigration was not necessarily a fundamental reason for Vox’s initial political breakthrough, it has certainly become a key issue for the party alongside popular and growing numbers of cases of ‘­Maurophobia’.12 That the majority of such refugees and immigrants are Muslim opens up Spain to considerations of its medieval past and of the Reconquista in popular discourse. The medieval in Spain is, therefore, a very modern consideration which continues to be cited in political dialogue by both the left and the right.13 This discourse is evidenced in many ways, but of particular interest here is the production of graphic novels that depict the medieval period. Earlier works from the Francoist era were typical of the ‘sword and sandal’ epics popular in contemporary films. Examples of such tebeos include El Capitán Trueno [Captain T ­ hunder], which was based on a ‘boys’ own adventure’ narrative with history and romance intertwining in swashbuckling tales.14 Such works, it has been argued, are notable for depicting negative stereo­t ypes of Moors/Arabs, ref lecting a lingering Islamophobia from the Civil War period.15 In later decades, however, such historically inclined tebeos were overtaken by more detailed works referred to 11 Omar G. Encarnación, ‘The Spanish Exception: Why Spain Has Resisted RightWing Populism’, Foreign Affairs (20 July 2017); Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte, ‘Explaining the end of Spanish exceptionalism and electoral support for Vox’, Research & Politics (April-June, 2019), 1–8. 12 Eleanor Rosenbach, ‘The rise of the far right in Spain’, Open Democracy, 27 November 2019 (https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/risefar-right-spain/); Ricard Zapata-Barrero, ‘The Muslim Community and Spanish Tradition: Maurophobia as a Fact, and Impartiality as a Desideratum’, in Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship: A European Approach, ed. Tariq Modood, Anna Triandafyllidou and Ricard Zapata-Barrero (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 143–161. 13 Hirschkind, ‘The Contemporary Afterlife of Moorish Spain’, 227–228. 14 See El Capitán Trueno: Tras los Pasos del Héroe [Captain Thunder: In the steps of the hero], ed. Patxi Lanceros, Juan Calatrava and José Manuel Sánchez Ron (Madrid: Círculo de Bellas Artes, 2016). See also Martín Alvira Cabrer, ‘Introduction’, in 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa by Jesús Cano de la Iglesia (Rasquera: Ponent Mon, 2016), 3–5 (3). All translations of non-English references and quotations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 15 Eloy Martín Corrales, ‘Maurofobia/islamophobia y maurofilia/islamofilia en la España del siglo XXI’ [Maurofobia/islamophobia and maurofilia/islamophilia in twenty-­fi rst-century Spain], Revista CIDOB d’Afers Internacionals 66–67 (2004), 39–51 (43); Manuel Barrero, ‘Tipificación segregacionista en los tebeos: El caso de los personajes árabes’ [Segregationist typing in comics: The case of Arab characters], Historietas 1 (2011), 18–39.

128

Iain A. MacInnes

as h ­ istorieta histórica [historical cartoons]. These graphic novels sought more directly to represent the past ‘as it was’ rather than as it was imagined. Influenced in part by French bandes dessinées, these works are increasingly prominent in the modern Spanish comics scene.16 This chapter considers two such works which were produced during the periods outlined above, namely the last years of the Francoist regime and modern-day Spain. It will consider how each of them presents the events of the Reconquista particularly in regard to the historical contexts in which they were written. This will be accomplished by considering two main themes: the nature of crusading activity as a Spanish, European and international phenomenon; and the treatment of the ‘other’ in these works. The graphic novels under consideration are El Cid, by Antonio Hernández Palacios, and 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, by Jesús Cano de la Iglesia.17 Palacios produced several historical graphic novels, but his medieval focus on pre-crusade Spain is demonstrated in his works El Cid and Roncesvalles.18 Palacios has been described as ‘maestro renovador del género histórico’ [the master renovator of the historical genre] and a ‘spécialiste des fresques historiques’ [specialist in historical frescoes].19 Palacios had a long career, and it began with the publication of El Cid in 1971–1972 in the Spanish magazine Trinca. While the magazine was linked to the Falangist 16 Cabrer, ‘Introduction’, 3; Salomé Sola Morales and Gonzalo Barroso Peña, ‘El cómic de no-ficción como fuente para el estudio de los conflictos bélicos: Crónicas de Jerusalén’ [The non-fiction comic as a source for the study of wars: Chronicles of Jerusalem], Historia y Comunicación Social 19 (2014), 231–248 (233–234); Alvaro Llosa Sanz, ‘Del Capitán Trueno a Robin de Luxley: magia, hechicería e Inquisición en el cómic contemporáneo español de tema medieval’, in Storyca: Magia, brujería, Inquisición, ed. Antonio Huertas Morales (Monografías Aula Medieval, 10, 2019), pp. 117–142, at pp. 118–120; Iain A. MacInnes, ‘Medieval Comics: Depicting the Middle Ages in European Graphic Novels’, Comics Forum, 15 April 2020 (https://comicsforum.org/2020/04/15/medieval-comics-­depictingthe-middle-ages-in-european-graphic-novels/). For examples of related works other than those analysed here, see for example: Oriol García i Quera, Mallorca 1229: Jaume el Conqueridor (Barcelona: Casals N, 2010); Juan Carlos Mora, Historias de guanches (Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Idea, 2013-2014), 4 volumes. 17 Antonio Hernández Palacios, El Cid Integral (Rasquera: Ponent Mon, 2015); Cabrer, ‘Introduction’, 3. 18 Juan Miguel Blay Martí, ‘Dibujando la historia: El Cómico como recurso didatíco en la clase de historia’ [Drawing the story: The comic as a teaching resource in history class], Revista Supervisión 21, no. 36 (2015), 1–14 (6–7). 19 Viviane Alary, ‘La historieta española en Europa y en el mundo’ [The Spanish cartoon in Europe and in the world], Arbor: Ciencia, pensamineto y cultura, 187, no. 2 (2011), 239–253 (242); Benoît Mitaine, ‘Une guerre sans héros? La guerre civile dans la bande dessinée espagnole (1977–2009)’ [A war without heroes? The Civil War in the Spanish comic strip], Cahiers de la Méditerranée 83 (2011), 227–236 (230).



‘For He Bestirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’ 129

Youth Movement (the wing of Franco’s regime responsible for indoctrinating young Spaniards into the ‘National Movement’), it largely kept overtly political material to a minimum. 20 Still, El Cid was a product of the period and its focus on medieval Spanish heroes aligned it with Francoist views of the past, in which the medieval was celebrated as part of an inherently Catholic Spanish past and the Reconquista was seen to hold parallels with the Francoist efforts against Communism.21 Palacios based his narrative on the various iterations of the Cid story to produce a work that displayed knowledge and understanding of historical evidence and the medieval period more broadly.22 The collapse of Trinca in 1973 meant that the later volumes of the series were not published until 1983 by Ikusager Ediciones.23 Indeed, the work remains unfinished, and Palacios had ambitions to create a work of twenty to twenty-five volumes chronicling the life of the Spanish hero Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar. Palacios died, however, before fully developing volume 5.24 The second text is a more modern work: 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, by Jesús Cano de la Iglesia. Published in 2016, the work’s status as historieta histórica is given weight as a result of the author himself being a historian. In an interview, the author commented that ‘ante todo y sobre todo me considero un divulgador de la Historia, cosa que hago a diario por mi condición de docente’ [first and foremost, I consider myself a promoter of history, which I do daily because of my teaching status].25 He also emphasised his determination to portray events in his novel as they are described in medieval sources, and the narrator references these works at 20 Carlos Uriondo, ‘El Cid de Antonio Hernández Palacios’, El Cid Integral, 3–8 (5); Enrique Acebes, ‘El Cid Integral by Antonio Hernández Palacios (Review)’, www.­e slahoradelastortas.com/el-cid-integral-de-antonio-hernandez-palacios; José Carlos Rueda Laffond, ‘Entre Franco y Juan Carlos: Representación y memoria en televisión y otros medios populares (1966–1975)’ [Between Franco and Juan Carlos: Representation and memory in television and other popular media], Historia Actual Online 32 (2013), 93–105 (96). 21 David K. Herzberger, Narrating the Past: Fiction and Historiography in Postwar Spain (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 15–38; Ward, ‘Constructing the Cámara Santa’. 22 Uriondo, ‘El Cid’, 6–7. 23 Ibid., 5. 24 Ibid., 5–6. For more consideration of the comic adaptation of El Cid, see Thomas Faye, ‘Narrative (De)Constructions and the Persistence of the Text: Images of the Cid between Epic Performance and Comics’, in Comics and Adaptation, ed. Benoit Mitaine, David Roche and Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot, translated by Aarnoud Rommens and David Roche (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018). 25 Jesús Jiménez, ‘“1212: Las Navas de Tolosa”, un cómic histórico espectacular’ [‘1212: Las Navas de Tolosa’, a spectacular historical comic], RTVE.es (29 ­September 2016), http://www.rtve.es/rtve/20160929/1212-navas-tolosa-comichistorico-­espectacular/1414786.shtml.

130

Iain A. MacInnes

key moments in the text. Cano de la Iglesia’s stated enjoyment of medieval and military history suggests a desire on his part to move beyond older-style fictional tebeos and focus on a ‘truer’ representation of Spain’s medieval history. He is, then, not unlike Palacios in his approach, although he does not mention the former as an influence on his own work. Despite the opinions provided above of Palacios as the doyen of historical comics, Cano de la Iglesia does not list the elder artist as an inspiration for his novel. Instead, he looked to various other influences, including the French Blueberry comic series by Jean Giraud, alias Mœbius, as well as the medieval-­ based Belgian series Las torres de Bois-Maury [The towers of BoisMaury] by Hermann. It is unclear whether Cano de la Iglesia saw the work of Palacios as being too old-fashioned to use as a basis for his own medieval-themed work. Its absence from the list of influences is certainly puzzling. But despite this, there is little doubt that several parallels can be drawn between the works in terms of their depiction of key themes. The historical context of the events described in these two works is quite different, although the person of the Cid and the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa have each become historical ‘sites of memory’ around which modern Spanish identity is constructed.26 El Cid is set around 1057 to 1063, which is arguably before the reconquest had begun in earnest. As a result, the eponymous hero supported Christian or Muslim lords as and when it suited him, and El Cid has been generously described by one historian as ‘an entrepreneur’.27 The principal military events in Palacios’ work – the Battle of Graus (1063); the siege of ­Coimbra (1064); and the ‘Barbastro Crusade’ (1064) – all occurred before the Iberian conflict began to take on a more militant religious outlook for both sides.28 This contrasts with the events in Las Navas, when the war was far more polarised in nature. Still, a useful link between the two periods is provided by the suggestion that one version of the Cid story – the Cantar de mio Cid [Song of my Cid] – may have been produced specifically as pre-war propaganda ahead of the Las Navas cam 26 See Peter Linehan, ‘The Cid of History and the History of the Cid’, History Today 37, no. 9 (1987), 26–32; Simon Doubleday and Miguel Gómez, ‘On (De)commemoration: Rethinking the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4, no. 1 (2012), 1–3. 27 Linehan, ‘The Cid of History’, 28. 28 Hugh Kennedy, Muslim Spain and Portugal (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 161– 188, 200–236; Javier Albarrán Iruela, ‘“He Was a Muslim Knight Who Fought for Religion, Not for the World”: War and Religiosity in Islam: A Comparative Study between the Islamic East and West (Twelfth Century)’, Al-Masa ¯ q 27, no. 3 (2015), 191–206.



‘For He Bestirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’ 131

paign.29 Las Navas is focused solely on the events surrounding the eponymous battle. It has been seen as something of a watershed victory following the previous Christian defeat at Alarcos (1195) and with the loss of Salvatierra Castle (1211).30 This perspective of the battle as a turning point in the reconquest was, however, one that was manufactured in the years following the encounter in order to better celebrate the victory.31 Its importance at the time may have been less obvious. Still, the victory at Las Navas arguably left the path clear for the subsequent Christian conquest of Almohad Iberia, which culminated in the capture of Seville in 1248.32 One of the important elements in each of the texts is the depiction of crusading efforts and those involved in them. Both accounts stress an element of Spanish exceptionalism in the way they approach their subject matter. It is clear in both works that the Spanish are the heroes. El Cid and the Knights of the Order of Cala­ trava provide the ‘Spanish voice’ in their words and actions. More than this, they act as opposites of other Christian forces, which are depicted in various ways as ‘other’ throughout both works. For example, the French forces depicted in both novels are visually very different from the knights of Spain. In El Cid, the army at the siege of Coimbra contains men wearing horned helmets, Norman-style helms, with their long blond hair in braids (Illustration 6.1). Such Viking-style warriors are likely Normans descended from Viking settlers in France, who became increasingly involved in Iberia as the eleventh century progressed.33 At the siege of ­Coimbra, the Spanish knights proudly display the arms of their lords and r­ espective kingdoms. The French warriors involved in the Barbastro siege simply wear the cross.34 Las Navas portrays things similarly: the French crusaders wear drab colours with the cross being the sole designator of their crusader status, while the 29 Michael Harney, ‘The Cantar de Mio Cid as Pre-war Propaganda’, Romance Quarterly 60, no. 2 (2013), 74–88. 30 Joseph F. O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Muslim Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 142, 167. 31 David Cantor-Echols, ‘Kingship, Crusade, and the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in the Chronica latina regum Castellae’, Romance Quarterly 60, no. 2 (2013), 102–113; Martín Alvira Cabrer, ‘Las Navas de Tolosa: The Beginning of the End of the “Reconquista”?: The Battle and its Consequences according to the Christian Sources of the Thirteenth Century’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4, no. 1 (2012), 45–51. 32 Damian J. Smith, ‘Las Navas and the Restoration of Spain’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4, no. 1 (2012), 39–43. 33 Lucas Villegas-Aristázabal, ‘Norman and Anglo-Norman Participation in the Iberian Reconquista c.1018–c.1248’, unpublished PhD diss., University of Notting­ ham, 2007, 55–64. 34 Hernández Palacios, El Cid, 142–143, 150, 158–159.

132

Iain A. MacInnes

­ panish ­warriors are emblazoned S with the heraldic designs of their families and terri­tories, creating a clearly visible distinction between the colour and knightly aura of the Spanish knights and their French counterparts. 35 This de­lineation between the secular, chivalric (Spanish) and religious, functional (French) warriors creates a firm division that reinforces the image of the northerners as ‘other’. More than this, it arguably emphasises their status as ‘lesser’ in comparison to the Spanish figures, who are the focus of these works. The French are also depicted as being opposite to the Spanish in terms of their bravery and partici­ pation. In Las Navas, the French do not take part in the battle at all, having left the army before combat commenced. They also commit atrocities in both novels. This negative depiction of the ‘Christian other’ appears to reflect the reality of events described in medieval sources. King Alfonso VIII wrote to Pope I­ nnocent III to announce his great victory, but he made it clear that the French had not participated in it and that they had been ­problematic throughout the campaign.36 There may be an element of ‘­Spanish exceptionalism’ here with the king determined that Illustration 6.1. ‘Viking’ war 35 Cano de la Iglesia, 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, 24–26. 36 El Reino de Castilla en la epoca de Alfonso VIII [The Kingdom of Castile in the age of Alfonso VIII], ed. Julio Gonzalez, 3 vols (Madrid: Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, 1960), 3: 566–572.

riors at the siege of Coimbra (­A ntonio Hernández Palacios, El Cid, 124). Reproduced with the kind permission of Ediciones Ponent Mon.



‘For He Bestirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’ 133

full credit for the victory should be his alone. Although French participation was an important element in the army’s success, there is little doubt that the idea of the Reconquista became an ideology in itself parallel to that of ‘crusade’.37 Though the papacy saw the military engagements as part of one larger initiative, the Spanish increasingly united around the idea of the ‘reconquest’ as a separate enterprise.38 In such an environment, it is unsurprising that the Spanish came to see the conflict as their war, and this idea may be reflected in these novels. The othering of the French ensures that the victories depicted are Spanish ones. Moreover, Spanish exceptionalism may also relate to more modern concerns. The involvement of outsiders in Spain draws parallels to the participation of foreign forces during the Spanish Civil War. Palacios himself fought in the wars, and on both sides, serving with the Republicans before fighting on the Eastern Front as part of Franco’s División Azul [Blue Division], the volunteer Spanish contingent that fought against the ­Soviets.39 French troops fought on both sides in the Civil War, and, as a result, it may be unsurprising that their depiction in these novels is a problematic one.40 Negative depictions of ‘invading’ French forces could also relate to the Spanish collective memory of the Napoleonic Wars. Increasingly understood as the Spanish War of Independence, the war against Napoleon is generally recognised as a pivotal point for modern Spanish national identity.41 Such modern experiences, therefore, may well have influenced the depiction of medieval French ‘interference’ in Spanish affairs, and they reinforce the idea of a desire to see the Re­conquista as a solely Spanish endeavour. Somewhat paradoxically, there may also be an attempt by both authors to depict the Reconquista as an integral part of the wider crusading movement and to ensure acknowledgement of the Spanish campaigns within the wider history of the crusades. Depicting the siege of Coimbra, El Cid illustrates massive siege towers, catapults, siege mines, scaling ladders and a huge battering ram, 37 Roberto Marin-Guzman, ‘Crusade in Al-Andalus: The Eleventh-Century Formation of the Reconquista as an Ideology’, Islamic Studies 31, no. 3 (1992), 287–318. 38 Ibid., 311. 39 Mitaine, ‘Une guerre sans héros?’, 236; Xavier Moreno Julià, The Blue Division: Spanish Blood in Russia, 1941–1945 (Brighton: Sussex University Press, 2015). 40 Martin Hurcombe, France and the Spanish Civil War: Cultural Representations of the War Next Door, 1936–1945 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); Judith Keene, Fighting for Franco: International Volunteers in Nationalist Spain during the Spanish Civil War (London: Hambeldon, 2001), 135–187. 41 José Álvarez Junco, ‘The Formation of Spanish Identity and its Adaptation to the Age of Nations’, History and Memory 14, nos 1–2 (2002), 13–36 (16–18).

134

Iain A. MacInnes

Illustration 6.2. Christian knights resembling a hedgehog (Jesús Cano de la I­ glesia, 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, 49). Reproduced with the kind per­ mission of ­Ediciones Ponent Mon.

all of which were used to attack the town.42 While evidence suggests that siege towers and other kinds of engines were indeed used at Coimbra, it is also tempting to see parallels between the siege weaponry depicted in this attack and the events of the siege of Jerusalem (1099).43 Here, too, large belfries and scaling ladders were constructed to breach the walls of the holy city.44 Similar allusions to the crusades in the Latin East may also be evident in Las Navas. When Muslim mounted bowmen fire on the Christian forces, their arrows catch in the knights’ chain mail and deflect off their armour (Illustration 6.2). 42 Hernández Palacios, El Cid, 139–143. 43 Peter Fraser Purton, A History of the Early Medieval Siege, c.450–1220 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2009), 202. 44 Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Siege (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), 114–116.



‘For He Bestirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’ 135

This image reinforces the strength of the medieval Christian knight, but again it may be inspired by battles elsewhere.45 Contemporary sources of Las Navas de Tolosa say little to corroborate the image and the trope of the knightly ‘hedgehog’, which may more accurately be said to reflect another crusading confrontation, namely the Battle of Arsuf (1192). Accounts of this battle, which was fought during the Third Crusade (1189–1192), include the description of King Richard I of England being ‘covered with such sheaf / Of arrows which the foe shot thick / And fast at him and which did stick / In horse and horsecloth that, in fine, / He looked just like a porcupine.’46 That both authors appear to allude to events of the eastern crusades suggests the possibility that this was an intentional attempt to reinforce the idea of the Spanish Reconquista as part of the wider crusading movement. Also of importance in these works is the depiction of the ‘other’. The obvious focus for such analysis is the Muslim population. In El Cid, Palacios aligns somewhat with perceived older stereotypes of ­Muslims in his work, although he largely eschews racist i­magery.47 There is the somewhat comedic Muslim leader at ­Coimbra, who is shocked at the arrival of the army before his walls. There is the more refined a­ l-­Muqtadir at the Muslim recovery of Barbastro. And there is the more unctuous and ‘stereotypical’ Muslim who describes the Battle of Graus to the novel’s heroes. Palacios has been described in terms of providing ‘la neutralité et (. . .) l’­objectivité’ [neutrality and (. . .) objectivity] in his work, even in his graphic accounts of the Spanish Civil War.48 Muslim forces were key to some of the fighting in this conflict on the side of ­Franco’s Nationalists. Post-war views of Muslims split along ideological lines between those former Republicans who saw them as having contributed to the brutality of the conflict and the former Nationalists who were sympathetic to ­Franco’s attempt to integrate Muslims into modern S ­ panish s­ ociety in 45 Clifford, J. Rogers, ‘The Development of the Longbow in Late Medieval England and “Technological Determinism”‘, Journal of Medieval History 37, no. 3 (2011), 321–341 (330–332). 46 Ambroise, The Crusade of Richard Lion-Heart, trans. Merton Jerome Hubert, ed. John L. La Monte (New York: Octagon Books, 1976), 424; Scott Manning, ‘Warriors “Hedgehogged” in Arrows: Crusaders, Samurai, and Wolverine in Medieval Chronicles and Popular Culture’, in The Year’s Work in Medievalism, ed. Valerie Johnson and Renèe Ward, with Laura Harrison, 33 (2018), 62–77. 47 Corrales, ‘Maurofobia/islamophobia y maurofilia/islamofilia’, 43; Barrero, ‘Tipificación segregacionista en los tebeos’, 18–39. 48 Mitaine, ‘Une guerre sans héros?’, 236. For his Civil War works, see Antonio Hernández Palacios, Eloy, uno entre muchos [Eloy, one amongst many] (Vitoria: Ikusager Ediciones, 1979); Río Manzanares [Manzanares River] (Vitoria: Ikusager Ediciones, 1979); 1936: Euskadi en llamas [1936: Euskadi in flames] (Vitoria: Iku­ sager Ediciones, 1979); Gorka Gudari (Vitoria: Ikusager Ediciones, 1987).

136

Iain A. MacInnes

r­ ecognition of their support for his cause.49 Palacios’s representation of Muslims does, then, appear to reflect a ‘middle-­ground’ approach, where individuals are recognised as being different but where there is no homo­­ geneous ‘Muslim figure’ that represents all Muslims. Certainly, there appears to be little determined attempt on Palacios’s part to demonise the Muslim figures in his novel. In Las Navas, Cano de la Iglesia takes this further with a nuanced depiction of Muslims throughout. He emphasises the nonhomo­g eneous nature of the Muslim army and its Illustration 6.3. Black slave troops in the splits along regional/ethnic 50 ­ lmohad tribes Almohad army (Jesús Cano de la Iglesia, lines. The A 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, 63). Reproduced in particular are depicted with the kind permission of Ediciones as zealously religious fightPonent Mon. ers, warriors who place their faith in Allah’s ability to protect them and to grant them ­v ictory.51 This differs from the more practical Andalusian Muslims, who are ­depicted as somewhat more akin to their Spanish Christian adversaries than the Almohads they fight alongside.52 The greatest disparity in the Muslim army is between Arab forces and the contingent of black African slave troops. Unarmoured and largely unarmed, they provide manual labour and one of the last lines of defence for the Caliph against the final attacks on the Muslim lines (Illustration 6.3).53 49 Tuma, ‘The Participation of Moorish Troops’, 91–107. 50 Eva Lapiedra Gutiérrez, ‘Christian Participation in Almohad Armies and Personal Guards’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 2, no. 2 (2010), 235–250 (236). 51 Cano de la Iglesia, 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, 51–52. 52 Ibid., 50–55. 53 Ibid., 63–64; Ira M. Lapidus, ‘Tribes and State Formation in Islamic History’, in Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, ed. Philip S. Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 25–47 (35).



‘For He Bestirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’ 137

Cano de la Iglesia further provides an important character arc based on the figure of a Muslim warrior, Abu Ibrahim.54 Returning to Baeza following Las Navas de Tolosa, he becomes one of the Muslim refugees who flee because the Christians ‘no hacen prisioneros (. . .) tienen sed de sangre’ [are taking no prisoners (. . .) are thirsty for blood].55 Las Navas emphasises the full impact of war on the Muslim population as men, women and children seek solace from Christian reprisals. Abu Ibrahim is forced to abandon his aged, blind and crippled father, who is ultimately killed when Christian forces burn the mosque in which he sought shelter.56 The obvious allusion in this image is to modern events, particularly to the Syrian refugee crisis and its resultant impact on Europe. Modern Spain had already seen an upsurge in immigration in the periods before and after the Arab Spring revolts, and the Syrian Civil War has increased the number of refugees applying for residency in Spain.57 The desire and ability of the country to continue to take in migrants and refugees has sparked much debate, and the depiction of similar scenes in Las Navas would appear to tap into this national discourse.58 There remains, however, little in the way of negative stereotyping of Muslims in this work, and there is little attempt to create a particularly negative image of the ‘Muslim other’. The same cannot be said for the French. Las Navas takes time to highlight the lack of homogeneity within the crusader forces, emphasising the misbehaviour of French troops throughout the narrative. They are unreliable, cause trouble within Spanish territory and are held responsible for various massacres during the campaign. In one example, a French knight in a Spanish marketplace assaults a local cloth merchant, and the French have to be physically stopped by Spanish warriors from committing further acts of violence against the local population.59 This is nothing, ­however, 54 Cano de la Iglesia, 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, 17–18, 56, 70–72. 55 Ibid., 71. 56 Ibid., 71–72. 57 Philippe Fargues and Christine Fandrich, ‘Migration after the Arab Spring’, European University Institute, Florence, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Migration Policy Centre (MPC), Research Report (September 2012), http://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/23504. 58 Joseph Wilson, ‘More than 160,000 March in Barcelona to Demand Spain Takes in More Refugees’, Independent (19 February 2017), http://www.independent. co.uk/news/world/europe/barcelona-march-refugees-protest-spain-more160000-­p eople-thousands-catalan-a7587996.html; Sam Jones and Jennifer Rankin, ‘Spain Lacks Capacity to Handle Migration Surge, Says UN Refugee Agency’, Guardian (17 August 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/ aug/17/spain-refugees-migrants-unhcr-warning. 59 Cano de la Iglesia, 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, 23–24.

138

Iain A. MacInnes

compared to the actions of the French forces in relation to the Muslims. At Baeza, the French crusaders burn the local mosque along with those who had taken shelter within it. The young Spanish squire, Alvaro, questions the need for such violence, and the narration of the novel suggests that this violent form of warfare, ‘la política de exterminio de la cruzada’ [the extermination policy of the crusade], was a new development ultimately brought to Spain by the ‘outsiders’.60 This idea reinforces the historical argument that Iberian society had largely normalised its military behaviour and practices towards the Muslims to avoid blatant acts of a­ trocity, despite the differences in faith.61 This may be somewhat simplistic, and there is little doubt that ‘the idea of the crusade’ was in ­e xistence in Iberia by at least the second quarter of the twelfth ­century.62 However, other examples of atrocity in Iberia also relate to the actions of ‘outsiders’. John France notes that the Christian capture of Barbastro (1064) ‘by troops from north of the Pyrenees caused enormous shock and provoked a massacre when the city was recaptured in the following year’.63 This event is depicted in El Cid, where the French are indeed portrayed as the purveyors of violence who massacre the town’s population in spite of its surrender.64 Palacios depicts these events in one particular panel by focusing on a Christian warrior, grinning out at the reader, bloody sword in hand, with bodies strewn across the courtyard behind him. The image of the warrior smiling out at the viewer is particularly noteworthy (Illustration 6.4). Robin Andersen has argued that, in relation to modern photo­ journalism, ‘official’ or mainstream images of war deliberately depict the ‘other’ in such a pose: eyes looking straight at the viewer, gazing back at the reader; weapon in hand, which is positioned between the viewer and the character to suggest menace or threat, but not aimed directly at the viewer; and violence in the image’s background.65 Palacios includes all of these elements – with one important difference: instead of the individual gazing threateningly at the 60 Ibid., 74. 61 John France, ‘Siege Conventions in Western Europe and the Latin East’, in War and Peace in Ancient and Medieval History, ed. Philip de Souza and John France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 158–172 (165–166). 62 Richard A. Fletcher, ‘Reconquest and Crusade in Spain’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 37 (1987), 31–47. 63 France, ‘Siege Conventions’, 165–166. 64 Hernández Palacios, El Cid, 158–159; Alberto Ferreiro, ‘The Siege of Barbastro 1064–65: A Reassessment’, Journal of Medieval History 9, no. 2 (1983), 129–144 (129). 65 Robin Andersen, ‘Images of War: Photojournalism, Ideology, and Central America’, Latin American Perspectives 16, no. 2 (1989), 96–114 (104–105).



‘For He Bestirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’ 139

Illustration 6.4. Grinning Christian warrior at Barbastro (Hernández Palacios, El Cid, 164). Reproduced with the kind permission of Ediciones Ponent Mon.

audience, he is instead grinning at the reader. He appears to revel in the violence that he has committed, and this reinforces the idea of the French as something ‘other’ than the Spanish heroes of the work, who are not depicted committing such acts. The French are further marked as ‘other’ by their religious zealotry. The monk, Amatus of Montecassino, is depicted similarly to the warrior, staring straight at the reader, his angry, mad eyes boring into the viewer as he rails against the licentiousness of the French in the aftermath of the capture of Barbastro (Illustration 6.5). Arnaud Amaury, the archbishop of Narbonne, is depicted similarly in Las Navas.66 He is presented as a figure­head for French misbehaviour, a religious fanatic who burns Cathar heretics and orders the burning of the Baeza mosque.67 Such a depiction is in opposition to that of the Spanish archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. Described by one historian as ‘a r­ enaissance 66 Cano de la Iglesia, 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, 13; Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Cistercians, Heresy, and Crusade in Occitania, 1145–1229: Preaching in the Lord’s Vineyard (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2001), 138–161. 67 Cano de la Iglesia, 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, 13.

140

Iain A. MacInnes

reconqueror’, de Rada is depicted as a loyal servant of the crown, advising ­A lfonso VIII on the battlefield and participating in the action alongside his king.68 Although he draws his sword, the archbishop is not shown engaged in the fighting.69 It might be assumed that the archbishop killed various Muslim enemies on the battlefield, although this is left in the ­g utters for readers to deduce for themselves. Still, it is arguable that such behaviour is consistent with contemporary norms. Men were killed in battle, and even an archbishop could be allowed to commit such acts if it was against a non-Christian foe. This conduct is very different from that of the French religious figures, who are portrayed committing, or at least inciting, acts of massacre and violence that lay outside of medieval, and perhaps also Spanish, behavioural norms. Further ‘othering’ of the French can be seen in the nomenclature used to describe them. The events in El Cid occurred before the First Crusade (1095– 1099), before the idea of the ‘crusade’ really came into being.70 The reference to the French soldiers involved in the Barbastro campaign as cruzados [crusaders] is therefore quite telling. Such nomenclature is paralleled in Las Navas, 68 Alex J. Novikoff, ‘From Dialogue to Disputation in the Age of Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 4, no. 1 (2012), 95–100 (99). 69 Cano de la Iglesia, 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, 58; Daniel M. G. Gerrard, The Church at War: The Military Activities of Bishops, Abbots and Other Clergy in England, c. 900–1200 (Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, 2016). 70 Ferreiro, ‘The Siege of Barbastro’, 129–144; Villegas-­A ristázabal, ‘Norman and Anglo-­ Norman Participation in the Iberian Reconquista’, 90–100.

Illustration 6.5. Amatus of Monte­c assino brandishing a cruci­fi x (Hernández Palacios, El Cid, 173). Reproduced with the kind permission of Ediciones Ponent Mon.



‘For He Bestirred Himself to Protect the Land from the Moors’ 141

where the French are described as ultramontanos [from beyond the mountains]. The use of both terms is surely a deliberate choice by the authors, positioning the French as ‘other’ in comparison to the Iberian characters, and again emphasising an element of ‘Spanish exceptionalism’. The French crusaders are further ‘othered’ in El Cid when Palacios depicts them ‘going native’ in the aftermath of their victory at Barbastro and engaging in acts of debauchery and drunkenness, with festivities and orgies taking over life within the city.71 This depiction appears to be based on historical reality, but such behaviour is again in opposition to that of the Spanish and sets the cruzados apart once more. While there may well have been some element of anti-French feeling in medieval Iberia, such depictions, as discussed earlier, may relate to more modern concerns. Indeed, it has been argued that Spanish stereotypes of the French historically included p ­ erceptions of them as ‘irascible, violent, unstable, [and] unreliable’ people, who displayed ‘vulgarity, hypocrisy, duplicity, unreliability and lack of sobriety’.72 Many of these stereo­ types are exhibited in the actions and demeanour of the French characters depicted in these novels, and this reinforces what appears to be a very deliberate portrayal of the French ‘other’ in opposition to the Spanish figures, who are the works’ principal heroes. To conclude, these two works provide a fascinating depiction of two different periods during the Spanish Reconquista. The portrayal of crusading events and the consideration of the ‘other’ in both works demonstrate that there are clear parallels in how both authors have approached their subject matter despite the chronological gap between their respective publications. While Palacios includes various allusions to the Spanish Civil War, these do not appear to alter unduly the view of the medieval period provided. They may reflect modern concerns with issues such as relations with France and Muslim immigration to Spain, but they also reflect the realities of the medieval world. Indeed, ­Palacios’s choice of the period of El Cid surely emphasises a determination to portray a Spain that was still in development, a Spain in which Christians and Muslims would ally with each other when it suited them. Far from providing overtly nationalist depictions of the Spanish hero, Palacios instead delivers an account of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar as he likely was: a soldier of fortune, loyal to his lord, but able to augment his allegiances when required and if it suited him.

71 Hernández Palacios, El Cid, 164, 173. 72 Eugen Weber, ‘Of Stereotypes and of the French’, Journal of Contemporary History 25, nos 2–3 (1990), 169–203 (171, 193).

142

Iain A. MacInnes

Cano de la Iglesia, while presenting an event set during a period in which Christian-Muslim relations were far more polarised, successfully considers both sides of the battle and the impact that war had on all those who were resident in Spain during this period. Although he does not appear to consider Palacios’s work to be an influence on his own, there are parallels to be drawn between the two works. Indeed, it is interesting that Cano de la Iglesia does not reject some of the themes of El Cid more obviously than he does: while he provides a more nuanced depiction of Muslims than does Palacios, this is one of the few elements that stands out as being notably different. Instead, what both of these novels provide is a consistently Spanish vision of the medieval Spanish past. It is a depiction that emphasises the importance of the Reconquista on its own terms and as a part of a wider movement. And it is a perspective that emphasises that Christians and Muslims were not perhaps so different after all. Indeed, there may have been more differences between co-religionists. That is an idea as relevant in medieval times as it was in Francoist Spain, and as it is today.

Iain A. MacInnes is a senior lecturer in Scottish history at the University of the Highlands and Islands. His primary research focuses on fourteenth-century Scottish military and political history. His mono­g raph Scotland’s Second War of Independence, 1332–1357 (Boydell Press, 2016) provides a detailed consideration of conduct and chivalry in this lesser-known period of conflict. He has published several book chapters and articles on graphic novel depictions of the Hundred Years War (1337–1453) in English- and French-language publications (including Le Trône d’Argile and Crécy), counterfactual depictions of the Middle Ages in the graphic series Jour J, and the medieval-like world of Game of Thrones.

Chapter 7

An Interview with Paco Roca Esther Claudio

A Brief Introduction to Paco Roca and his Work Paco Roca may be the best-known Spanish comics artist of the moment. His graphic novel Arrugas (first published as Rides by Delcourt in 2007, in Spanish by Astiberri 2007 and in English as ­Wrinkles by Fantagraphics in 2016), a tender, funny story about a man with Alzheimer’s disease, soon became a success amplified by its adaptation to the big screen in 2011.1 The film won awards for ‘best album’ and ‘best script’ at both the Barcelona International Comic Fair and the Dolmen Critics Awards. Madrid’s Expocomic acknowledged it as the ‘best Spanish work’ of the year, and it received the most prestigious prize in the country, the National Prize. Abroad, it received the ‘best work’ award at the Lucca and Rome festivals, and the film won the Goya as the ‘best animated film’ and ‘best adapted screenplay’. Roca’s work started in underground Spanish magazines like El Víbora and Kiss Cómics, but he always felt the need to narrate, to tell stories. His first long-form comic or 1 Paco Roca, Arrugas (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2007).

144

Esther Claudio

graphic novel was El juego lúgubre [The sombre game], 2 a horror story about the painter Salvador Dalí, and since then, his works have alternated between comic strips for national newspapers and graphic novels. After Arrugas, both the Barcelona International Comic Fair and Expocomic acknowledged El invierno del dibujante, [The cartoonist’s winter] as the ‘best script’ and ‘best work’,3 although Los surcos del azar, published in English by Fantagraphics as Twists of Fate in 2017,4 has been the most successful work since Arrugas. La casa (published in English by Fantagraphics as The House, 2020) – a domestic story of loss, family and time – incorporates manga narrative devices, ideograms and pages that pay tribute to Frank King’s page layouts.5 Roca’s comic strips appear in national newspapers and tell the adventures of his ‘man in ­p yjamas’, an alter ego that comments on humorous everyday ­stories. His most recent work is La encrucijada [The crossroads], a ‘vinyl record-book’ as he calls it, in which he compiles his conversations and experiences with rock artist José Manuel Casañ.6 Esther Claudio: I discovered your work through El invierno del ­dibujante, and I loved it because it was a comic about Spanish comics, about our cartoonists. In an American context, Art Spiegel­ man, Chris Ware and others were determined to rescue authors from the beginning of the twentieth century, and you acknowledge and celebrate wonderful ­Spanish comic strips by Cifré, Peñarroya Vázquez and others. Paco Roca: Yes, there were things that were great, especially before censor­ship, before the end of the fifties, because it was more social, very regionalist. It described Spain right as it was at that moment, with fewer fantastic elements, so it was quite interesting. Later, censorship made it impossible to cover certain topics, and cartoonists had to resort to the fantastic or even the surreal. Given that it is a comic about Spanish comics, it has not worked well abroad, but if it was a comic about French or US authors, I think it would be much more successful. After all, the problem is universal, and our authors were real pioneers, not only of the medium but of the fight for cartoonists’ rights as workers. Nobody in the world at that time was thinking about copyright, and these authors risked everything they had for it.

2 Paco Roca, El juego lúgubre (Barcelona: La Cúpula, 2001). 3 Paco Roca, El invierno del dibujante (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2010). 4 Paco Roca, Los surcos del azar (Bilbao: Astiberri 2013). 5 Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015). 6 Paco Roca, La encrucijada (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2017).



An Interview with Paco Roca 145

EC: Well, I see a lot of attention being paid to comics in Spanish, probably because many people speak the language and it’s a good market. PR: Yes, but I see more of a market for graphic novels. Manga and US superheroes might be universal, but they sell best in their own countries. The same goes for Franco-Belgian comics and things that work in those countries might not do so well abroad. However, with the graphic novel, there’s a kind of international reader – you can sell two thousand copies in Germany, two thousand in Japan and two thousand in Spain, so I believe the world market has changed in this respect. And it is like the novel, where you are interested in the perspective of an author from another country. Before, when you did comics, they had to be very local, and if you got hired by a foreign publishing house, your comic had to follow a set of standards, a language that was targeted to a specific audience who expected certain conventions. After I finished Arrugas for Delcourt, even though it was brought out as part of a new graphic novel collection, the publisher asked, ‘So what are you going to do now?’ and I said I had Las calles de arena [Sandstreets] in mind,7 and he replied, ‘Yes, but this kind of thing is not profitable. Do a series; we’ll all make money from it. You do issue 1, and if it works, then issue 2 and then merchandising, toys, et cetera’. But the graphic novel meant complete freedom for me – the topic I wanted, the number of pages, the depth, the drawing style I chose. And not only that. Dealing with non-mainstream topics means that you have to find new narrative resources. It also made me look at the panel in a different way, no longer as a window on reality but as a metaphor in itself, and it’s the graphic novel that makes authors realise this because they need new narrative tools. That’s what the graphic novel is: it’s walking off the beaten track. EC: The topics you choose seem to connect with a wide variety of audiences. This reminds me of something that might sound like a sidetrack, but bear with me [laughs]. Peter Sloterdijk says that when Heidegger wrote to Jean Beaufret, he was talking not really to him but to a reader in the future. In this sense, texts are like love letters in time because one never knows who will read them in one hundred, two hundred, a thousand years, but if the reader connects

7 Paco Roca, Las calles de arena (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2009), first published as Les rues de sable (Paris: Delcourt, 2009).

146

Esther Claudio

with your ideas, it is like talking through time.8 How do you decide what your works will be about? PR: Well, I pay attention to everything around me. You know that historical memory in Spain is, unfortunately, fashionable because it is one of the many unresolved issues that the country faces, and I discovered that people find this particular aspect of Spanish history quite interesting abroad, in France, in Italy, in the US. Sometimes you just go for it, as in the case of La casa, where I just felt the need to tell that story. I thought it would be very regional, even in Spain, and I didn’t know to what extent this thing of the holiday home was common in the rest of the country. In France, Germany, Korea or Japan, this concept is difficult to understand, but they are still interested in the story because it talks about how to handle memories of the dead father, the home as symbol for the family, et cetera, so I really took a leap of faith with this one because I didn’t know if my concerns were so common. But ultimately it is what we said before – you are never a weirdo on a desert island: you are in a society where you are kind of conditioned by everything that surrounds you. In La casa, a father’s death is something that everybody more or less experiences, so in the end, you are part of society. There are two things: topic and plot. [Alfred] Hitchcock explained that when he would try to sell his film to a producer and they told him, ‘Nobody will know what plutonium is! We’ll fail! If the protagonist is looking for something people don’t know, it’ll be a failure’, he would reply, ‘Well, change it for anything, a suitcase of money if you want, who cares?’ because in reality it’s the feelings you portray that make people connect. It may be loss, or the solitude of old people, or memories. EC: Your works are about reconciliation. They remind me of Sandra Cisneros, whose narrative about Chicano identity integrates contradictory aspects and clashing discourses in an understanding and inclusive way. You treat your characters with tenderness and care. PR: Well, I’m an optimist, and I think I always tell the same story – people who stoically fight against something – but the situation is what it is, and things end the way they must. No one wins, but everybody’s tried and they end with dignity. I believe that that’s my vision and that it gets repeated throughout my stories. The endings are bittersweet, but that’s life. 8 Peter Sloterdijk, Not Saved: Essays after Heidegger (Cambridge: Polity, 2017), 193–217.



An Interview with Paco Roca 147

EC: I was talking about Cisneros, but what are some of your influences? PR: Talking about the treatment of characters, I admire [Jiro] Tani­ guchi’s more personal works like A Distant Neighbourhood or El almanaque de mi padre.9 EC: I see a transformation between the Roca of Arrugas to the Roca of La casa. In the latter, you revel in the exploration of the narration of time in a way that you hadn’t done before, and your style looks less ‘cinematographic’. PR: I try to escape from that because it limits you. Little by little, you discover what works for you, and I realised I’m not at all interested in the types of shots or framings that are still in El invierno del dibujante, for example. For the type of stories I tell, I prefer the freshness of the live stage of a theatre for instance, where the viewer simply ‘attends’, so I prefer to use a fixed shot and let the action develop through details, where the character is more than a talking head through the body language and where there are things happening simultaneously. EC: It’s funny you say that, because I had marked these pages of El invierno del dibujante (Illustration 7.1) where you precisely use what you say that you developed later, these elongated panels where different actions take place simultaneously. PR: Yes, but the reality would be more like that. Besides, the page of a comic works in two ways: it must be narrative, and it must be visual, aesthetically attractive. In the beginning, the French publishers would give me instructions like, ‘There must be a close-up, then a medium shot, then you do a raccord [transition]’, et cetera, while playing with the size of the panels to make it look attractive. Here it’s the opposite of that. It’s appealing through repetition, which I think can be beautiful, but it’s also functional, and it makes you feel as if you’re right there. Comics seek a certain degree of innovation that cinema has also incorporated. The style of the documentary in films like Saving ­Private Ryan [Steven Spielberg, 1998], as well as the raw techniques of the Dogme [95] movement, renewed the language of cinema. In the same way, readers who haven’t been reading comics all their lives but who started with the graphic novel might be put off by classic comics. They might find them predictable, even if they were 9 Jiro Taniguchi, A Distant Neighbourhood (Wisbech: Fanfare, 2009); Jiro Taniguchi, El almanaque de mi padre [My father’s almanac] (Barcelona: Planeta, 2013).

148

Esther Claudio

Illustration 7.1. El invierno del dibujante, 95. Reproduced with kind permission from Paco Roca.



An Interview with Paco Roca 149

masterpieces, like ­Moebius’s comics or like [Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido’s] Blacksad. EC: Yes, there was an established grammar that they knew would sell, and it worked for a certain type of readership. PR: And it works for a certain type of comic, like adventure, but if you’re trying to do a different kind of story, it doesn’t contribute much. For instance, one of my favourite authors is Jaime Hernandez, and his designs are quite simplistic because he’s interested in conveying a story. Moebius is one of the greatest graphic artists ever and you feel his need to show his virtuosity, but [Marjane] Satrapi or the Hernandez brothers don’t need to show off: they focus on narration. EC: Actually, I think your comics can easily be compared with the Hernandez brothers’ because they value the community in a way that artists like Ware, Seth or [Daniel] Clowes don’t. Their technique and skill shine, but their stories are mainly about the individual, about loneliness – very acerbic and depressing. I was talking with Ana Merino about how the Hernandez brothers’ work gives prominence to family, social relationships, bonding, et cetera, which is difficult to find nowadays . . . PR: Yes, it’s true that in the world of the graphic novel there are so many voices and perspectives that it’s difficult to group them into different categories. EC: No, I didn’t mean that. PR: Yes, but it’s true that the misfits, the weirdos and loners like in the stories of Clowes are the opposite to the world of the Hernandez brothers, where you love all the characters. They started in the eighties, and they were already incorporating many of the topics and the type of material developed today. They didn’t make a fuss, they didn’t make a noise, they didn’t show off. EC: And they incorporated magic realism; they dealt with topics like homosexuality, gender constructions; they developed the slice of life. PR: And they go a little unnoticed because their comics looked simple, but they knew what they wanted to relate. I saw an exhibition, and their drawings were full of corrections, white-out, et cetera, so it seems that it was hard for them to draw, unlike for somebody like Moebius. However, their drawings had life and dynamism, like Satrapi’s.

150

Esther Claudio

Illustration 7.2. Contemplative panels, La casa, 6. Reproduced with kind permission from Paco Roca.

EC: In La casa I found a certain influence from manga, with those contemplative panels that focus on objects, on the fall of the leaves, on water running, to underscore the passing or the stagnation of time (Illustration 7.2). PR: I like manga very much! It has contributed greatly. For instance, in a superhero comic, you can’t add anything that has no direct relation with the narrative, and even when they’re punching each other they’re talking to keep the plot going. The Franco-­ Belgian bande dessinée, limited to forty-six pages, is the same: you have no time to create an atmosphere, and sometimes you have to include long paragraphs because there’s no space. However, due to the way manga is published, it has many pages, and that gives time to pause over small things, not just to condense a story into a certain number of pages. I think manga – and anime – has those pauses, that calm way of narrating, the pleasure of narrating the everyday. Not all artists like that, but I love drawing somebody on the phone, or sitting in a cafe, or eating – the simple things in life. EC: In Los surcos del azar, you bring back the drawing style of El invierno del dibujante and combine it with the style that you develop in La casa (Illustrations 7.3–7.5). Apart from the obvious temporal division, why this contrast?



An Interview with Paco Roca 151

PR: I wanted to make a distinction between fieldwork, ongoing research, the everyday, with a less elaborated style. EC: Why the decision to frame or not frame? [See Illustration 7.4.] My interpretation is that the past is framed because that time is finished, enclosed. PR: I’ve read many interpretations. I didn’t want to frame the present: I wanted to make it look fresh, more like a draft, ethereal. It’s also what you say, memories are kind of boxed and the present has a certain continuity; it’s unfinished, like a constant draft.

Illustration 7.3. Thick strokes in El invierno del dibujante, 14. Reproduced with kind permission from Paco Roca.

Illustration 7.4. Combination of styles in Los surcos del azar, 151. Reproduced with kind permission from Paco Roca.

152

Esther Claudio

EC: Miguel, the protagonist, is half made up, half true. What did you do to recreate this pseudo-fictional character? What is fictional and what is not? PR: Well, I never talked to him. My work relies on the book by Captain Raymond Dronne, and I completed it with testimonies by people of his age. There were mostly two groups: these men and the younger ones who got recruited later. Miguel was among the older ones, and I looked for those who were in their thirties like him and Amado Granell. Amado had left a family behind in Spain, and I thought that if Miguel was in his late thirties, it was possible that he had had one too, so I invented a past for him that turned out to be true! When the comic was published, Miguel’s granddaughter wrote to me to ask if I had talked to him. I said no, but she was shocked because it all made sense: her grandmother was pregnant with her mother when Miguel left, her mother had

Illustration 7.5. Thin lines, almost overlapping in La casa, 116. Reproduced with kind permission from Paco Roca.



An Interview with Paco Roca 153

never met Miguel, et cetera, so I put her in touch with the historian who’d helped me. EC: Robert Coale? PR: Exactly. So, they both researched him further in Paris. EC: And what happened with Miguel? PR: Well, there were conflicting speculations. He disappeared during a mission, and rumour had it that he had deserted to join the rebellion at Valle de Arán, that he remained in Paris with the anarchists, et cetera, but he may have died in the course of some mission not long after, although nobody knows what happened. EC: You were talking before about Saving Private Ryan – what were your influences for the war genre? Maybe La guerre d’Alan [Alan’s war]?10 PR: No, although I love the artist. I did not want to be conditioned, so I avoided reading any of that. In fact, with La casa, I read Fernando Marías’s La isla del padre [The island of the father],11 and I realised he tackled the same topics, which brought me down [laughs], but still, in the end I’m talking about my own personal experience, and that’s always going to be unique. Also, when you read something, you can’t avoid bringing some of that to your work, so I really prefer not to read anything that might affect it. EC: Los surcos del azar has been considered the ‘Spanish Maus’.12 Do you agree? PR: I don’t think so. EC: Why not? PR: I mean, I read Maus a long time ago, and I haven’t read it since. There are many narratives that incorporate interviews, testimony, conversation as a tool, although maybe without Maus there wouldn’t have been Los surcos del azar because it made me aware of the fact that I could do it that way. EC: Is this interview going to be included in one of your comics? [laughs] PR: Ah, it could be! [laughs] Yes, maybe. 10 Emmanuel Guibert, La guerre d’Alan, 3 vols (Paris: L’Association, 2000–2008). 11 Fernando Marías, La isla del padre (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 2015). 12 Art Spiegelman, Maus, 2 vols (New York: Random House, 1986 and 1991).

154

Esther Claudio

EC: No! I hope not! [laughs] PR: Well, my new book [La encrucijada] is about that: I met with the singer for three years, I invented stories for his songs, and I drew all our conversations about music. EC: Oh my God, I’m doomed [laughs]. Back to Los surcos del azar, why didn’t you just tell the story of La Nueve?13 Why tell Miguel’s story? PR: Because I was more interested in the perspective of an ex-­ soldier after so many years of silence. It’s not so critical, but it’s a portrayal of what historical memory has been in Spain, of finding the testimonies, of the survivors’ reluctance to open old wounds, of taking this story up to the present, of showing how Spanish refugees were treated in France. What makes the story about La Nueve interesting is not the fact that they liberated Paris, which they didn’t, nor was the liberation of Paris as significant as we might think, nor did La Nueve fight as great a battle as Stalingrad or anything like that. The real value of La Nueve is symbolic: it’s about these people who kept fighting for many years for what they believed in Africa and in Europe. The tragedy is that they did it all with one goal in mind – to free Spain from fascism – and that was the only thing they could not achieve, no matter how hard they tried. I was also interested in recounting how they did not want to go back to that Spain of the dictatorship, how they started from scratch somewhere else and how the people of La Nueve were rediscovered; their first official acknowledgement I believe was in the nineties. Furthermore, I’m interested in learning how anyone copes with whatever they did in the war. Many ex-combatants were proud to say that they never executed enemies, but Miguel Campos did, so how would somebody like him see that years later? Also, it is about the nature of the comic. Although any fictional recreation of war, whether a film or a novel, inspires mistrust, I believe it provokes greater suspicion in a comic. EC: Prejudices . . . PR: Yes, so I used the interview to surprise readers, so that they would read the story in a different way. I mean, it’s nothing new: Fargo [Joel and Ethan Coen, 1996] uses the ‘based on a true story’

13 The ‘ninth company’, made up mostly of exiled Spanish Republicans, who participated in the liberation of Paris in 1944.



An Interview with Paco Roca 155

device, and that helps to appeal to what could otherwise be a reluctant audience. EC: Talking about prejudices and about bringing the story up to the present, I must say that the part that moved me the most was the episode concerning the soldiers from Chad. People said, ‘France can’t be liberated by Africans’, or something like that. This also works as a premonition of the lack of acknowledgement – or concealment? – of the participation of Spanish Republicans in the French army. It p ­ roblematises an otherwise romanticised view of those who fought fascism, as a homogeneous block of idealists with a strong sense of justice, but who in reality were just very different human beings with some ideals and many prejudices. PR: Yes, that’s why I needed to include the present-day episode. We’re used to war films where the protagonist is just a private but still seems to have a whole picture of the war, but the reality is that they wouldn’t know what was going on in most cases. Consequently, if I’d stuck to the story of La Nueve, without the section concerning the present, that soldier wouldn’t have been able to give me a complex perspective. I needed the passing of time to go beyond the battles, the small stories that were worth telling, all the nuances of a story like this. Probably Leclerc and De Gaulle would have chosen a different type of soldier, not Spaniards who were communists, leftists, et cetera. All these aspects are interesting, and you need to tackle them from the outside. On the other hand, this is the anti-story of historical memory. For years, testimonies weren’t checked: you could have a relative who was involved in a war, you wrote down [their] experience and that became true. EC: That’s why I find it fascinating that the fictional part of your book is the interview PR: Exactly, it is turned the other way round. You include the facts, the evidence, framed in a fiction, so it’s the opposite, like a histori­ cal testimony. EC: So, Miguel talks on behalf of Robert Coale. PR: Yes, exactly. EC: How do you tackle a personal project like La casa as compared with a less autobiographical work? PR: Obviously, a personal project is more difficult, but something like El invierno del dibujante is also challenging for the same reason: you weren’t there. I drew my own conclusions, and I don’t know if

156

Esther Claudio

they are right, and I was concerned about what Vázquez’s descendants would think. Victor Mora was still alive. EC: Did you meet him? PR: Yes, I had to for my research. So you end up being less critical with them; you censor yourself, in a way. But you must also try to understand why they did what they did, and even if I was very critical of Bruguera’s publisher, I think I still show his side of the story. Also, with something like El invierno del dibujante, you start from scratch, so you tell the story as you receive it, and you’re making sense of it at the same time as you’re explaining it. With La casa, first, you must get rid of your own reticence, and second, you don’t know how well you’re explaining yourself because your background is already there: you take it for granted. For me, it is important to put emotions on paper, but it was difficult for me to recount the last moments with my father at the hospital because I didn’t know to what extent I was conveying all that, if it was working, you know? EC: Yes, however, I find your narrative style very relaxing as a reader, and I may be going back to what we’ve discussed in relation to other authors – you mentioned Moebius – about how one stops frequently to admire their art. With you, it’s difficult to do so because you ‘hide’ your resources and take the reader by the hand; you lead their gaze. PR: Maybe. I don’t know because I don’t like reading my works once I’ve finished, but I like that suggestion. I suppose it works for the type of stories I tell, but maybe I should change it if I want to tackle other issues. EC: No, no, I didn’t mean you have to change anything [laughs]. PR: No [laughs], it’s fine. Who knows what themes I’ll tackle where [my approach] won’t work, and then I’ll have to find new resources or narrative styles. In fact, it’s true that I’ve reached a point where I can achieve what I want with minimal effort. It’s the same grid and point of view most of the time, it’s becoming a standard, and once you reach that point you should change or it gets boring. In fact, one of the reasons for making La casa horizontal was precisely that: I was bored and I needed a little challenge; otherwise the graphic style gets static. And here we go back to what you were saying about Los surcos del azar: that thick line, neat and shadowed with which I drew the past, reached its peak and I didn’t want to continue it. I needed to change it for something like the drawing style of the present, which I continued in La casa.



An Interview with Paco Roca 157

Illustration 7.6. Cover of La casa. Reproduced with kind permission from Paco Roca.

EC: And is it me, or are you a little obsessed with these kinds of Sorollesque shadows? [See Illustrations 7.1 and 7.6.] They’re always linked to good moments or moments of calm. In El invierno del dibujante, they only appear in the spring and summer, the time of joy and hope, and in La casa it’s the same. PR: Well, because they’re both depicting a Mediterranean landscape. But it’s not so much [Joaquin] Sorolla I admire: it’s nineteenth-century Romantic painters. From them I took the colouring style, and I like David Roberts in particular, who painted Egypt, landscapes, et cetera See? [Shows images of Roberts’s paintings.] It’s that colour palette that I like. EC: For La casa? PR: Hmmm . . . No, for everything in general. It is also in Los surcos del azar, and Roberts’s colours as well as his Orientalism were the inspiration for Hijos de la Alhambra [The Alhambra children].14 He was famous for his drawings of Egypt and the Alhambra, so I mainly took his ­palette, that style without garishness. 14 Paco Roca, Hijos de la Alhambra (2003; repr., Barcelona: Planeta de Agostini, 2007).

158

Esther Claudio

EC: Yeah, quite soft and harmonious. PR: Yes, and those yellows, those warm colours, so poetic, like a landscape. EC: Why did you make the Emotional World Tour with those ochres, whites and greys?15 [See Illustration 7.7.] PR: Ah, it was actually me who chose it, and it was an influence from this one. [Hands over a copy of David Mazzucchelli’s Discovering America.]16 EC: Mazzucchelli! But I didn’t know this one. I’ve read his adaptation of City of Glass and Asterios Polyp.17 PR: See? I didn’t like Asterios Polyp that much. EC: Why not? PR: I don’t know. The story didn’t move me, and again, I found it a catalogue of virtuosity. EC: And this one is so different, nothing to do with Asterios. PR: I know, right? I think his style here and in City of Glass has influenced me and other cartoonists much more. And the story is beautiful. The bitonal colour here was an inspiration. EC: It’s a challenge to use only two colours. PR: It’s something I’m still waiting to explore. I believe Dave McKean has something similar. EC: And have you read [Miguelanxo Prado’s] Ardalén?18 PR: No, it’s a pity, but I want to. EC: Ardalén explores Alzheimer’s disease differently from Arrugas; it focuses more on the nature of memory and on how it shapes identity. It’s also very different in how the experience of illness is narrated by the patient, the carer or an external observer. In general, discourses about Alzheimer’s by patients insist on agency, on the struggle they are going through. Carers tend to use metaphors

15 Paco Roca and Miguel Gallardo, Emotional World Tour (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2009). 16 David Mazzucchelli, Discovering America (Bologna: Coconino Press, 2001). 17 Paul Karasik, Paul Auster and David Mazzucchelli, City of Glass (New York: Avon Books, 1994); David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp (New York: Pantheon, 2009). 18 Miguelanxo Prado, Ardalén (Barcelona: Norma, 2012).



An Interview with Paco Roca 159

Illustration 7.7. Emotional World Tour, 60. Reproduced with kind permission from Paco Roca.

160

Esther Claudio

related to the quest, loss, grief, et cetera.19 Narratives by observers like yourself might do two things – explore either memory as a concept, like Ardalén, or personal relations – and Arrugas is more a story of friendship, right? PR: Yes, it was difficult to tackle a project like this, so I did it as a journey of two friends. If you want to tell an adventure story, you already have a grammar, but illness is a relatively new topic, so I used the tools I already mastered. EC: Were other graphic novels like L’ascension du haut mal or Our Cancer Year inspirational?20 PR: Hmmm . . . no . . . no, because at that stage of my career, I was coming from one place and I wanted to go in a different direction. So, as you said, yes, it is an adventure story, about somebody who gets to a new place, finds an ally, encounters dangers, explores forbidden spaces. But using this structure for Alzheimer’s might have been the reason why it reached a wider audience. Had I done it in a more ‘adult’ or ‘experimental’ style like L’ascension, it might not have worked. And it made the story very accessible. Like you said, in reality, it is a story about solitude and friendship. It’s funny – somebody said that you don’t realise what you want to say until you finish your book, and in hindsight, now that I’m talking to you, I think that what I really wanted to talk about was the carers, about that personal growth that somebody like Miguel goes through. If I did it again, I’d focus on Miguel. I’ve met many people like him since, and not only relatives, people who for whatever reason end up taking care of somebody, and their stories are similar to this character’s: they approach it first as a burden but later they grow when faced with adversity. This is really the topic, not so much the illness – it’s really about the story of the carer. It was also an exploration of the genre. I thought that the worst horror story I could tell was about somebody with Alzheimer’s, whose world gradually changes, and [they don’t] know what’s going on. EC: And you put the reader in the ill person’s shoes from the first pages, when that couple comes to ask for a loan and it all suddenly crumbles away. 19 See Martina Zimmerman, ‘Alzheimer’s Disease Metaphors as Mirror and Lens to the Stigma of Dementia’, Literature and Medicine 35, no. 1 (2017), 71–97, https:// doi.org/10.1353/lm.2017.0003. 20 David B., L’ascension du haut mal, 6 vols (Paris: L’Association, 1996–2003), published in English as Epileptic, 6 vols (New York: Pantheon, 2005); Harvey Pekar, Joyce Brabner and Frank Stack, Our Cancer Year (Philadelphia: Running Press, 1994).



An Interview with Paco Roca 161

PR: And the rage – as we were saying before, I wanted to underscore the question of dignity, how he gets angry because his dignity’s hurt. EC: You’ve explained before, in other interviews, that the anecdote was real and the story was loosely based on your friend McDiego and his father. What other real people feature in Arrugas? PR: Let me think . . . my parents are there! Miguel and Antonia are their names. EC: But are they based on their personality or just their names or appearance? PR: My mother’s very much like Antonia. EC: And she features in Andanzas de un hombre en pijama [Memoirs of a man in pyjamas], correct?21 PR: Yes. I suppose we’re ultimately in a reduced universe of references, and something that you use here you use again somewhere else. My father appears in Andanzas, and it’s like a starting point for La casa, so it’s all related and you’re always working with the same material. I don’t know if it’s lack of ideas [laughs] or whether you can adapt the same material to different formats. Also, one tends to think that drawing is like a therapy that heals you and that by writing about your father at a certain point, it’s over, you get rid of it. But it sticks there, you go back, you’d like to draw it differently this time or approach it in this other way, and I suppose that as time passes, you get a different perspective on certain situations, on certain feelings. So despite talking about the same thing, you’re different at the point where you’re doing it. Sometimes the change is just nuances, and some things about my father went unsaid and came up in a different way. Or things you covered in La casa might be explored differently in future projects. This also applies to the films. With the film of Arrugas,22 I could include things that had no space in the comic, like the scene of the swimming pool. Now there’s a project to adapt La casa to film, so that gives you an opportunity to treat differently or cover many things you’ve turned over in your mind. EC: It must be very different to draw a comic and draw a storyboard for a film.

21 Paco Roca, Andanzas de un hombre en pijama (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2014). 22 Ignacio Ferreras, dir., Arrugas (La Coruña: Perro Verde films, 2011).

162

Esther Claudio

PR: Yes, mainly the ambiguity. A storyboard’s going to be the basis for a lot of people to work on, so there can’t be metaphorical allusions or things left to the readers’ interpretation, whereas in a comic or a graphic novel it’s the opposite. EC: Also, you know that many people consider comics the younger or poorer brother of cinema. How do the two languages differ, given that you’ve worked on both? PR: First of all, comics mean complete freedom to me. In terms of money, a film is a huge investment, and that may ultimately thwart your project; it doesn’t have to, but it may happen. In a comic that doesn’t happen: the publisher invests because they like your project and they give you almost total freedom. It’s true that some artists, like Will Eisner, considered comics as some sort of film on paper, but when you’re working on it, you realise that it’s closer to a novel because many details are left in the hands of the reader. In a film, the voices, the music, the takes and everything are very defined. This also conditions the way you narrate. In a comic, you can have lots of characters, time lapses, et cetera because in a comic you can stop, but in a film you can’t go backwards and forwards continuously, and if there’s an important detail, you have to emphasize it more. The act of watching has limitations regarding the type and amount of information that you can keep in order to understand and get the story going. There are more differences than similarities between cinema and comics.

Esther Claudio is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles. She organized the First International Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels in Madrid (November 9–12, 2011) and she edited On the Edge of the Panel: Essays on Comics ­Criticism (2015). She was co-founder and co-editor of the www.comicsgrid.com and she is now member of the editorial board of the academic journal Mester (University of California, Los Angeles) as well as of CuCo: Cuadernos de Cómic. Her research interests revolve around two axis: the formal analysis of experimental comics and the study of memory as a mechanism for transitional justice.

Chapter 8

‘They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’ Intergenerational Memory and La casa Sarah D. Harris

The Trembling Giant, or Pando, [. . .] an enormous grove of quaking aspens [. . .] really is a single organism. Each of the approximately 47,000 or so trees in the grove is genetically identical and all the trees share a single root system. —Atlas Obscura

In Spain, discussions of memory have dominated political and cultural discourse for the past twenty years. Jo Labanyi called the Spanish literary phenomenon in the late 1990s a ‘memory boom’, and debates since then have centred on ‘historical memory’, with corresponding attention to the large-scale political ramifications of collective v­ iolence and r­ epression.1 In this respect, Spain is one of many countries that participated in a global search for restorative 1 Jo Labanyi, ‘Memory and Modernity in Democratic Spain: The Difficulty of Coming to Terms with the Spanish Civil War’, Poetics Today 28, no. 1 (2007): 89–116 (94).

164

Sarah D. Harris

justice in the early twenty-first century, and Spain’s comics have taken up the politics of memory as well.2 While several excellent Spanish comics (Un largo silencio [A long silence], Cuerda de presas [String of prisoners], El arte de volar [The art of flying], El ala rota [The broken wing], Los surcos del azar [Twists of fate], etc.)3 build on the tradition of Maus and others in considering memory in overtly political contexts, this chapter’s focus is Paco Roca’s La casa [The house] (2015) and the fresh, infra­ ordinary perspective it adds to the well-established conversation on memory in Spain.4 La casa relates the quite apolitical struggles of three siblings who inherit their father’s second home in the countryside. This relatively short and semi-autobiographical work reduces the national obsession with memory to an intimate scale, using quotidian metaphors to invoke the power of intergenerational memory. In its intimacy, the book invites a reconsideration of notions of ‘giving voice’ and ‘sites of memory’ by focusing on an ordinary Spanish family and then drawing a blurry line between their present and their past, and between characters themselves and the objects that carry their memory. The Pando grove, referenced in this chapter’s epigraph and connected by a single root system, survives underground during times of intense fires, but the Pando is not the only tree to connote hidden depths or interconnectedness. This chapter will situate the visual and verbal metaphors of tree, house, food and land in La casa within the larger context of comics and memory, and within the consistent attention to memory across Roca’s work. I argue that the comic’s focus on tending to la casa’s land, via Roca’s sophisticated use of the medium, demands also that we cultivate a new generation taking up its ancestors’ struggles, including the silent struggles of a repressed (or buried) generation. As has been echoed throughout this book, Spain has a vibrant and exciting comics scene, one that deserves more inter­national acclaim. Spanish comics have increased their domestic visibility in media and online and garnered institutional support in the form 2 Anne Whitehead’s critical guide to memory ends with a reflection on the flood of public apologies and searches for restorative justice that defined the first decade of the twenty-first century. Anne Whitehead, Memory (New York: Routledge, 2008), 154. 3 Jorge García and Fidel Martínez, Cuerda de presas (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2005); Antonio Altarriba and Kim, El arte de volar (Alicante: Ediciones de Ponent, 2010); Antonio Altarriba and Kim, El ala rota (Alicante: Ediciones de Ponent, 2016); Francisco Gallardo Sarmiento and Miguel Gallardo, Un largo silencio (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2012); Paco Roca, Los surcos del azar (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2013). 4 Paco Roca, La casa (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2015).



‘They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’ 165

of the annual National Comics Prize from the Spanish Ministry of ­Culture since 2007. Growing numbers of conferences and seminars have emerged, and recent comics offer appealing and accessible options to myriad audiences. After years of calling the attention of an international academic community, 5 Spanish comics have more recently reached a wider Anglophone audience, as exemplified in the 2016 Publishers Weekly article ‘Spanish Graphic Novel Boom Reaches America’, which announced the US publication of the anthology Spanish Fever (by Fantagraphics), or the fact that a slim selection of other Spanish comics is finally getting translated into English.6 One of the best-known contemporary Spanish cartoonists, Roca is a seriously heavy hitter. Borja Usieto writes in Cuadernos de Cómic, ‘Si tuviéramos que escoger un paladín de la novela gráfica española este sería con gran probabilidad Paco Roca, el autor al que se le debe [. . .] el consolidamiento del cómic bajo la forma de novela gráfica en el tejido cultural de nuestro país’7 [If we had to choose a paladin of the Spanish graphic novel, it is likely Paco Roca would be it. We owe to him (. . .) the consolidation of the comic, in form of the graphic novel, in the cultural fabric of our country].8 Following the game-changing success of Roca’s Arrugas (2007, published in English as Wrinkles in 2015),9 Roca has earned the freedom to write and draw whatever he chooses.10 The immense success of Arrugas also allowed for the broader artistic bonanza that we have since seen in Spain. Usieto attributes much of this impact not only to Roca’s considerable storytelling and artistic chops but also to his intention to create work accessible to a broad a­ udience. Roca never strays from this objective of broad appeal; given much artistic freedom, he has also increasingly chosen subjects that will raise awareness of underrepresented stories and historical events. 5 See e.g. The International Journal of Comic Art’s symposium on Spanish comics in 2003, and related articles in John A. Lent, ed., International Journal of Comic Art 5, no. 2 (2003). 6 Heidi MacDonald, ‘Spanish Graphic Novel Boom Reaches America’, Publishers Weekly (16 September 2016), https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/ industry-news/comics/article/71507-spanish-graphic-novel-boom-reaches -america.html. 7 Borja Usieto, ‘Los surcos del azar’, CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic, 2 (2014): 227–230 (227). 8 This translation and all others from Spanish are mine. 9 Paco Roca, Arrugas (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2007), published in English as Wrinkles (London: Knoackabout, 2015). 10 Pepo Pérez, ‘Entrevista a Paco Roca: La vida es sueño’ [Interview with Paco Roca: Life is a dream], Guía del Cómic (February 2009), http://www.guiadelcomic.es/ paco-roca/entrevista-2009-perez.htm.

166

Sarah D. Harris

Comics, Autobiography and Memory Work Comics provide a paradoxical opportunity for (re)presenting memory that is both very visible and invisible. In this sense, the cartoonist Chris Ware suggests that comics themselves are ‘a possible metaphor for memory and recollection’.11 In many settings, the marginal status of comics has allowed freedom for subversive content. As a result, some have called comics themselves sites of memory in times of repression, citing the immediacy of self-­ publishing, low production costs, their underground status and sharing practices that facilitate dissemination.12 Diego Espiña Barros writes that the memory boom in Spain ‘se producía por primera vez fuera de la torre de marfil de la academia, alcanzando su máxima expresión en las múltiples manifestaciones de la cultura de masas, entre las cuales [. . .] el cómic no fue ajeno’ [was produced first outside of the ivory tower of academia, reaching its fullest expression in several manifestations of mass culture, among them the comic].13 About the opportunities afforded by the marginal status of some comics in the United States, the comics scholar Hillary Chute writes, ‘Underground comics were avant-garde; they were political; they were taboo-shattering; and they were formally experimental’.14 More broadly, much of Chute’s research focuses on memory in autobiographical comics; she asks, for instance, ‘what does it mean for an author to literally reappear – in the form of a legible, drawn body on the page – at the site of her inscriptional effacement?’ and theorises that ‘the medium of comics can perform the enabling political and aesthetic work of bearing witness powerfully because of its rich narrative texture: its flexible page architecture; its sometimes consonant, sometimes dissonant visual and verbal narratives; its structural threading of absence and presence’.15 Her final point in this list refers to the fact that the medium is built on the 11 Chris Ware, ‘Introduction’, in The Best American Comics 2007, ed. Chris Ware and Anne Elizabeth Moore (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007), xiii–xxiv (xxii). 12 Jorge L. Catalá Carrasco, Paulo Drinot and James Scorer, ‘Introduction’, in Comics and Memory in Latin America (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), 3–32. 13 Diego Espiña Barros, ‘El día que mi padre comenzó a hablar: Trauma y memoria de la guerra civil española en Un largo silencio de Miguel Gallardo’ [The day my father started talking: Trauma and memory of the Spanish Civil War in Un largo silencio by Miguel Gallardo], CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic 7 (2016): 88–109 (91). 14 Hillar y Chute, Why Comics: From Underg round to Ever ywhere (New York: ­HarperCollins, 2017), 15. 15 Hillary Chute, ‘The Texture of Retracing in Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis”’, ­Women’s Studies Quarterly 36, no. 1–2 (2008): 92–110 (93–94).



‘They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’ 167

ongoing counterpoint of presence, in frames or panels, and visible absence, in the gutter.16 Autobiography is a genre that has long thrived in the medium and engages questions of memory and its (re)presentation. Harriet E. H. Earle argues that comics promote a particular type of narrative, especially in autobiographies, because they allow for intensely personal and individual stories.17 The cartoonist Eddie Campbell shows how the underground scene in the United States expanded the possibilities of autobiographical comics, so La casa joins a still-growing body of important autobiographical or semi-autobio­ graphical comics worldwide.18 In Spain, recent autobiographical comics have been among the most celebrated. Among these, the notion of simultaneous absence and presence adds to our understanding of intergenerational memory in Antonio Altarriba’s prizewinning El arte de volar (2009), Miguel ­Gallardo’s Un largo silencio (1997) and La casa. In each, the patriarch is gone yet still present in the objects and child(ren) he has left behind, as well as in the comic itself as a site of memory. In each, the past is over, but somehow more evident than it was in its own time. Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1980–1991), probably the most wellknown autobiographical comic in the world, depicts the transference of memory through dialogue between father and son, creating the comic’s double authorship, a structure that is taken up in both El arte de volar and Un largo silencio.19 In El arte de volar, a biographical-autobiographical hybrid about the late-life suicide of the author’s father, Altarriba states that just as he is the son who inherited his father’s DNA, Spain is the daughter of her history, confirming a thread on familial and shared memory that runs through many of these works, including La casa.20 Both Altarriba and Gallardo speak in the first person for an elderly or recently deceased parent. Altarriba explains: 16 Hillary Chute, ‘Comics Form and Narrating Lives’, Profession (2011): 107–117 (108). 17 Harriet E. H. Earle, Comics, Trauma, and the New Art of War (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2017). 18 Eddie Campbell, ‘La autobiografía en el cómic’, in Supercómic: Mutaciones novela gráfica contemporánea [Supercomics: Contemporary graphic novel mutations], ed. Santiago García (Madrid: Errata, 2013), 25–38 (30). 19 Xavier Dapena, ‘“Nobody Expects the Spanish Revolution”: Memoria indignada e imaginarios de la historia en la narrativa gráfica española contemporánea’ [Indignant memory and historical mindsets in contemporary Spanish graphic narrative], Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 50, no. 1 (2015): 79–107 (92). 20 Abel Grau, ‘“El arte de volar”, crónica del choque de utopia y realidad en la España del siglo XX’ [‘El arte de volar’ A chronicle of the clash of utopia and reality in 20th-­century Spain, El País (16 November 2010), https://elpais.com/ cultura/2010/11/16/actualidad/1289862004_850215.html.

168

Sarah D. Harris

A pesar de que mi padre no hablaba mucho conmigo, yo tenía con él una extraña complicidad. Por eso en el álbum hablo de una alianza de sangre entre él y yo. A fin de cuentas la suya todavía corre por mis venas. La historia, por tanto, no podía contarse de un modo distante e impersonal. Había que hacerlo con la primera persona que [. . .], en ningún caso, supone una traición a la vida real de mi padre.21 [Although my father didn’t speak much to me, I had a strange complicity with him. That’s why in the book I speak of a blood alliance between him and me. At the end of the day, his blood flows through my veins. His story, therefore, can’t be told in a distant or im­personal way. I had to tell it in the first person, which (. . .) in no way betrays my father’s real life.]

Roca also tells a story of the inheritance of memory, but with a strong focus on objects as carriers of this. La casa portrays memory as an active and shared effort, a portrayal with which many theo­ rists agree. Memory studies scholars often reference Maurice ­Halbwachs’s On Collective Memory, in which he proposes that memory is a social process and an activity; its creation requires work and communication, 22 or Pierre Nora’s notion of lieux de mémoire (sites of memory), where he defines collective memory as ‘what remains of the past in the lived r­ eality of groups, or what these groups make of the past’ (emphasis added).23 ­A lthough Nina Fisher calls memory work a ‘natural human a­ ctivity’, most of the theory on intergenerational memory relates to the offspring of survivors of mass violence, who inherit an absent or un­processed memory.24 Other than the very natural human experience of losing a parent, no extreme loss or intense pain is present in La casa. Nonetheless, the comic still shows memory as a shared effort, and it reveals the blurry limits between individual and collective memory across generations.

Roca and Memory All of Roca’s recent comics explore memory and oblivion: for ­e xample, his aforementioned breakout success Arrugas is about 21 Herme Cerezo, ‘Conversación con Antonio Altarriba y Kim sobre “El arte de volar”, un tebeo magistral’ [Conversation with Antonio Altarriba and Kim about ‘El arte de volar’, a masterful comic book], Siglo XX (5 November 2009), http:// www.diariosigloxxi.com/texto-diario/mostrar/48818. 22 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 23 Quoted in Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 95. 24 Nina Fischer, Memory Work: The Second Generation (London: Palgrave McMillan: 2015), 4.



‘They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’ 169

­ lzheimer’s patients; Las calles de arena [Streets of sand] (2009) is A about a man losing his memory and his identity as he wanders a labyrinthine city; El invierno del dibujante [The winter of the cartoonist] (2010) reclaims the forgotten story of cartoonists fighting for artistic rights under the dictatorship; and Los surcos del azar [Twists of fate] (2013) intentionally brought recognition to the anti-­ fascist Spaniards who liberated Paris in the Second World War.25 Many of these books reclaim the stories of those who are forgotten, lost, or silenced by the machine of modern society. In some ways, La casa is the next logical chapter of Arrugas. Whereas Arrugas focused on dementia in old age, La casa focuses on the aftermath of an aged parent’s death. As I have suggested about Altarriba’s and Gallardo’s comics, the small story in La casa is representative of a much bigger story – one that reads as largely universal yet still specific to a time and place. In interviews, Roca has stated that in La casa he wished to offer tribute to the 99 per cent of the population that never gets to be a protagonist of a story, did not get traumatised in the postwar years and did not do anything more heroic than create a family while surviving a period of austerity.26 Roca calls the phenomenon by which a relatively large number of impoverished Spaniards purchased and maintained second homes in the 1970s and 1980s ‘very Spanish’ and ‘very Medi­ terranean’. Also relevant to how La casa’s story is representative, Roca notes the tendency of his father’s whole generation towards ­Diogenes syndrome, known as senile squalor syndrome and characterised by self-neglect, compulsive hoarding and apathy. Because of this tendency among aging Spaniards (likely in response to the postwar poverty they had survived), many second homes became landing places for school projects, old fabric, toys, discarded gifts and so on, and Roca calls them ‘un Gran Museo de Recuerdos’ [a great museum of memories/mementos].27 The museum of mementos ties the two generations and makes the family’s past visible – even impossible to ignore – in the present. In fact, the entire culture of the Spanish Transition to democracy, according to Guillem Martínez, was meant to continue the 25 Paco Roca, El invierno del dibujante (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2010); Paco Roca, Las calles de arena (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2009); Roca, Los surcos del azar. 26 Abella, Anna. ‘Paco Roca, la muerte y ausencia del padre’ [Paco Roca, the father’s death and absence], El Periódico (4 December 2015), http://www.elperiodico.com/ es/noticias/ocio-y-cultura/paco-roca-comic-Casa-padre-4725848. 27 Ibid. Translation note: the same word, recuerdos, means either mementos or memories. The implications for objects of memory are important to keep in mind for the analysis of La casa.

170

Sarah D. Harris

Illustration 8.1. La casa disregarded (Paco Roca, La casa, 4). © text and illustrations 2015, 2018 by Paco Roca. All rights reserved. Published by agreement with Astiberri Ediciones.

dictatorship’s neo-liberal attention to individualism and consumerism, so the ‘very Spanish’ acquisition of second homes during the same period would logically be specific to this time and place. 28 In offering a tribute to the ordinary 99 per cent of the population, the comic remembers and celebrates the hard work it took for a generation of lower-middle-class Spaniards to acquire and maintain a second home and then wonders what happens when the next generation inherits the objects their parents have hoarded there. Particularly relevant for this type of memory work, we must not under­estimate ‘certain topoi that embody memory traces – ­e xamples are family heirlooms or personal names [. . . that] function as hinges between the past and the present’29 (Illustration 8.1). La casa suggests that remembering is important because memory – either on an individual or a collective level – creates identity. Further, as Pepo Pérez writes in his review of La casa, ‘la memoria hay que sembrarla, cultivarla, regarla como el huerto que aparece en este libro’ [we must sow, cultivate and irrigate memory 28 Dapena, ‘“Nobody Expects the Spanish Revolution”’, 84. 29 Fischer, Memory Work, 8.



‘They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’ 171

like the orchard in this book].30 As Pérez notes, the memories in La casa are intimate, daily, ‘infra­ordinary’ (as coined by Georges Perec), neither ordinary nor extraordinary, banal nor exotic, and therefore, they bear the weight of time and life lived.31 La casa opens simply: an old man puts on his jacket, opens his front door, locks the door and never returns home again. When he is gone, the weight of his memory forces Antonio’s adult children (and, to a lesser extent, his young grandchildren) to examine all the small things in his house. Each object tells a small but personal story. Because Antonio was always working, always engaged in projects around the house, each project that falls into neglect also signals the time that has passed since he was alive.

La casa and Its Symbols Comics work the way the brain works . . . past, present, and future all butted up against each other – the perfect medium for depicting memory. —Art Spiegelman, Bookpage interview

In allowing past and present to coexist in the shared space of a page, comics create a sense of simultaneity that can add weight to the aforementioned phenomenon of memory traces, or the hinges between past and present. Chute explains, ‘Lines on the page, in how they juxtapose time and space, convey the simultaneity of experience’.32 She continues, ‘Through its spatial syntax, comics offers opportunities to place pressure on traditional notions of chronology, linearity, and causality – as well as on the idea that “history” can ever be a closed discourse, or a simply progressive one’.33 This depiction of time explains how La casa holds both past and present in the same space. For example, in illustration 8.2 we see the present day juxtaposed with the progression of several years in the past, images that illustrate what Vicente is saying: the whole family used to work together on the house, until both of his younger siblings stopped coming, and he was left to bear the burden alone with his parents. The layout of this page increases the weight of the isolation and obligation in the page’s final panel because Vicente’s resentment over assuming sole responsibility 30 Pepo Pérez, ‘La casa’, CuCo – Cuadernos de Comic, 5 (2015): 143–149 (144). 31 Georges Perec, Lo infraordinario, trans. Mercedes Cebraín (Madrid: Impedimenta, 2008), 22–23. 32 Hillary Chute, Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics and Documentary Form (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016), 262. 33 Ibid., 4.

172

Sarah D. Harris

Illustration 8.2. Simultaneity of past and present (Paco Roca, La casa, 76). © text and illustrations 2015, 2018 by Paco Roca. All rights reserved. Published by agreement with Astiberri Ediciones.

lingers in the present too. This phenomenon, Chute writes, the ‘all-at-onceness”, [or] “symphonic effect”’of comics, heightens the sense of the house as an ordinary yet powerful place of memory.34 In addition to the apparent simultaneity of memories in the intra­diegetic present, La casa also reinforces the presence of memo­ ries through devices such as the literary and visual metaphors of trees, house, food and land. A detail panel of a tree marks the passing seasons when Antonio’s daughter takes him to regular doctor’s appointments over several months, for instance.35 Trees are a frequent symbol for intergenerational memory, and the most important tree to Antonio is the fig tree (Illustration 8.3). Antonio’s son José wonders, ‘Mi padre no era constante con las cosas [. . .]. No sé por qué esa fijación por las higueras’ [My father wasn’t steady about things (. . .). I don’t understand why he had that obsession with figs].36 This question is answered for readers in a flashback to Antonio’s childhood, when he breaks through a fence to play in an old streetcar and then eats figs while reclined in the branches of the tree. Here, as a child in the forbidden fig tree, Antonio later 34 Chute Why Comics, 25. 35 Roca, La casa, 111–116. 36 Ibid., 41.



‘They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’ 173

Illustration 8.3. The fig tree (Paco Roca, La casa, 47) © text and illustrations 2015, 2018 by Paco Roca. All rights reserved. Published by agreement with Astiberri Ediciones.

explains to a friend, ‘me olvidaba del hambre que pasaba en casa, de mi hermano enfermo y de aquel niño que siempre me pegaba’ [I forgot the hunger I felt at home, my sick brother and that kid who always hit me].37 After Antonio’s death, this same friend speculates to Antonio’s son, ‘Supongo que todos tenemos un momento feliz que recordamos siempre. Para tu padre debía ser ése’ [I suppose we all have a happy moment that we always remember. For your father, that must have been his].38 The fig tree Antonio plants on his own land becomes both a reminder of his postwar past, and an obligation for his children (to care for it now). Within and beyond La casa, trees are a frequent metaphor for family, and the book takes advantage of this connotation with a large-scale illustration to diagram the family structure that José lays out verbally for his girlfriend (Illustration 8.4). The in­herited plot of land and its house appear as elements growing on the family tree, as does the text of José’s explanations about who is who, and how everyone is connected. The house and its land appear in the same position as members of the family. Unlike many family tree layouts, here the most recent additions of the family are at the 37 Ibid., 47. 38 Ibid., 48.

174

Sarah D. Harris

Illustration 8.4. The family tree (Paco Roca, La casa, 31) © text and illustrations 2015, 2018 by Paco Roca. All rights reserved. Published by agreement with Astiberri Ediciones.

top of the page. This design choice is a clever way to introduce all the family members, and it leads the reader through an unusual U-shaped engagement with the page. This page provides a clear example of what Chute proposes in arguing that ‘comics locates the reader in space and for this reason is able to spatialize memory’, and ‘because of its spatial conventions, comics is able to map a life, not only figuratively but literally’.39 Another large-scale diagram – this time, one of an almond tree’s trunk – also spatialises the memory of various past events and draws a map of the family’s shared life. Like the detail panels set alongside Antonio’s regular doctor’s visits, here the tree’s growth makes visible the seasonal passage of time. After cutting down the large tree from his father’s land, José looks at the trunk’s rings and explains, ‘Aquí sería el momento en que mi padre lo regó por última vez. Aquí sería cuando dio las primeras almendras, y más o menos por aquí, lo plantamos’ [This would be when my father watered it for the last time. Here would be when it first bore almonds, and here, more or less, when we planted it].40 Each of these events connects visually (by colour and by diagrammatic line) to a 39 Chute, ‘Comics Form and Narrating Lives’, 109. 40 Roca, La casa, 33.



‘They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’ 175

Illustration 8.5. The tree speaks (Paco Roca, La casa, 30) © text and illustrations 2015, 2018 by Paco Roca. All rights reserved. Published by agreement with Astiberri Ediciones.

specific annual ring on the trunk, further re­inforcing the way the past lingers visibly in the present. In another scene, José mentions to his girlfriend that he finds it strange to sit in his father’s house without being asked to help with any tasks or projects, until the rustling leaves seem to call to him (Illustration 8.5). Antonio’s ghost returns to say, ‘Ayúdame con esto, anda. Voy a construir una caseta aquí para poder hacer las barbacoas’ [Help me with this; come on. I’m going to build a hut here so we can have barbecues].41 Their interchange reveals that Antonio’s presence remains in the space where he spent so much time and energy, and suggests visually that his voice lives in the very tree he planted. Antonio’s presence remains palpable inside the house as well. Not only is the second home a repository for all the objects that have nowhere else to go, but also Antonio’s hard work went into its many proj­ects throughout the decades he spent there. Unfortunately, ­A ntonio’s children do not know what to do with the objects of their past, and they suppose they will have to discard them in the dumpster outside. Roca’s use of design and colour are remarkable once again, as they illustrate the origins of some precious but discarded 41 Ibid., 30.

176

Sarah D. Harris

Illustration 8.6. Traces of the past in the dumpster (Paco Roca, La casa, 20). © text and illustrations 2015, 2018 by Paco Roca. All rights reserved. Published by agreement with Astiberri Ediciones.

objects of memory in the dumpster (Illustration 8.6). These items have been chosen and saved for many decades, and the literary scholar Bill Brown explains that ‘family heirlooms are meaningful beyond their legibility as carriers of memory, almost as though by association they have soaked up traces of the former owners’ being’.42 The sense that these objects could contain a record of the past, even traces of their owners, is heightened by the colours on the page and makes their relegation to the dumpster more tragic. The house itself has ‘soaked up traces’ of its owner’s being too. Roca explains to an interviewer: La casa somos nosotros, la forma que le hemos dado y la que nos ha dado a nosotros. La casa es el contenedor de los recuerdos de una vida. Quería entender al padre a través de la casa y todos los elementos que hay en ella. [We are the house, the shape we gave it, and that it gave us. The house is the container for the memories/mementos of a life. I wanted to understand the father by way of the house and all of the elements that are in it.] 42 Bill Brown, A Sense of Things: The Object Matter of American Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 104.



‘They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’ 177

Roca goes on to note that his decision to give La casa a horizontal orientation recreates the orientation of the house itself, which elevates the idea of comics as a site of memory.43 The book is the house, and both contain memories and juxtapose different moments in time. In addition to the figs that will grow on Antonio’s favourite tree and remind us of his childhood, rituals around food at the family’s second home bring additional weight to intergenerational memory. In La casa, what Patricia Caplan has written is true: ‘food is never “just food” and its significance can never be purely nutritional’.44 The sensory experience of foods triggers memories, while the ritual of family meals cements collective identity. The first flashback in the comic shows a family meal – Antonio’s birthday lunch – under his beloved yet rickety pergola. This and other annual food rituals echo the aforementioned practice of marking each passing year as if they were rings in the trunk of a tree. In fact, the father’s obsession with the pergola dates back to his admiration for a similar traditional meal among his boss’s family, whose country home he calls an ‘ambiente de ensueño’ [a fantasy place] that symbolises ‘llegar a ser el patriarca de una familia . . . y tener un terreno y una casa donde reunirse y disfrutar de la familia’ [becoming the patriarch of a family . . . and having land and a house to gather together and enjoy the family].45 The memory of a plentiful and elegant meal is especially powerful in the post-war ‘years of hunger’. At the flashback birthday meal, the siblings’ partners meet each other for the first time. José complains about the timing of the meal, which may cause him to miss a movie. His sister Carla worries about her young daughter being cold. These comments foreshadow other, more serious conflicts regarding the siblings’ priorities and responsibilities. Specifically, as already seen in ­Illustration 8.2, resentment arises from those left behind to care for the family and the home. Further, in the p ­ resent day, the surviving siblings continue to have different approaches to food, which adds another element of conflict to their interactions. José dislikes cooking, so he and his girlfriend snack on potato chips and buy frozen pizzas. His older brother Vicente complains that this way of eating is a waste of money.46 The comic suggests partial resolution when

43 Infame&Co, ‘Entrevista a Paco Roca’, El Portaluco (9 November 2015), https://­ elportaluco.com/la-Casa-entrevista-a-paco-roca. 44 Patricia Caplan, Food, Health, and Identity (New York: Routledge, 1997), 3. 45 Roca, La casa, 36. 46 Ibid., 54.

178

Sarah D. Harris

the whole family finally enjoys frozen pizzas together and reminisces about the birthday lunch we saw at the start of the comic.47 Other scenes focus on produce grown on the very land the siblings have inherited. This land has special significance as a place of memory, as the seeds and saplings that Antonio planted continue to live in the present, more immobile than the children he engendered, and who also represent his ongoing legacy. In more political contexts, some of the debates around historical memory in Spain have centred on opposing tendencies to cover or to uncover sites of memory, including former prisons.48 Many of the fiercest debates have swirled around access and funding for the literal unearthing of mass graves. In La casa, the land serves as connection between past, present and future as well. In a metaphor for their shifting roles in the family, Roca plays with the visual representation of the passage of time by exaggerating the relative heights of Antonio and José in two parallel panels on a two-page spread (Illustration 8.7). In the first panel, the two characters harvest potatoes as José listens to his father’s advice. In this visual exaggeration, we are to understand that as a child, José looked up to his father. In the second panel, and as echoed in Antonio’s explanation of his humble job, José grows aware that his father is a simple, even powerless, man. He is, we might even say, the salt of the earth. According to Xavier Dapena, the publication of Roca’s Arrugas, along with its contemporary María y yo [María and I] (by Miguel Gallardo, the aforementioned author of Un largo silencio), marked the beginning of the ‘predominio de la materia de la memoria, no solo de “memoria histórica”’ [predominance of the subject of memory, not just ‘historical memory’].49 As this chapter has described, La casa advances this shift, introducing a nuanced exploration of banal and personal, yet still collective and intergenerational, memories in Spain. If left unattended, memories of Antonio would fade and dry like the plants in his yard. As Roca explains about La casa, Esos árboles, ese campo, es, al final, lo único que le queda. Cuando él ya no está esos árboles se van secando, esos frutos van cayendo al suelo sin que nadie los recoja. Es como la casa pero con elementos vivos.50 47 Ibid., 107. 48 M. Cinta Ramblado-Minero, ‘Sites of Memory / Sites of Oblivion in Contemporary Spain’, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 36, no. 1 (2011): 29–42 (32). 49 Dapena, ‘“Nobody Expects the Spanish Revolution”’, 80. 50 Infame&Co, ‘Entrevista a Paco Roca’.



‘They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’ 179

Illustration 8.7. Growth and perspective (Paco Roca, La casa, 18–19). © text and illustrations 2015, 2018 by Paco Roca. All rights reserved. Published by agreement with Astiberri Ediciones.

[Those trees, that land, is, in the end, all that is left for (the father). When he is gone, those trees dry out, those fruits keep falling on the ground without anyone to pick them. It’s like the house but with living elements.]

180

Sarah D. Harris

This question of who will carry on the memory and the chores of a generation drives Roca to conclude this comic by suggesting that the surrounding community must do the work of maintaining memories across generations. La casa draws near its close when the family eats together under a new pergola that honours Antonio’s memory. The middle child, ‘the writer’, says, ‘No necesitamos esta casa para acordarnos de Papá’ [We don’t need this house to remember Dad], and despite their earlier conflicts, there is a lovely panel where the family seems united, glowing and discussing their interconnected future.51 Yet the book does not end there. The family members go back to their respective homes and a ‘For Sale’ sign appears on the gate of the house. Antonio’s friend prepares for a last visit to the dead man, setting up a concrete block where his old friend can sit, and ­A ntonio (or his ghost) appears. The two men talk about how important it is for them to gather family together at their country homes. But we readers now know that Antonio’s children have likely gathered together there for the last time. The last thing the ghost and his friend say to each other is about the fig tree. Antonio says, ‘No me voy a morir sin subirme a las ramas a comer higos’ [I’m not going to die without climbing the branches to eat figs] as he walks away.52 The friend finishes his drink, frees the tree from its supports, gathers up all its roots and takes it with him. In so doing, he picks up an established symbol of the past, of memories and of a friend, and accepts the responsibility of providing ongoing attention to this living memory trace. If the symbolism of the tree were not clear enough, La casa presents just one last indication of the importance of carrying on our ancestors’ struggles: the book closes with a photograph of Roca and his real-life father, deceased shortly before Roca wrote this book. Evoking the age-old idea that photographs exist between life and death, the book’s final photograph serves as an apt metaphor for the book’s entirety. The photo offers one more reminder of a message carried throughout the comic: it is necessary to honour the legacy of those silenced and buried, so that their memories live on.

51 Roca, La casa, 121. 52 Ibid., 127.



‘They Tried To Bury Us; They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds’ 181

Sarah D. Harris, a scholar of contemporary Spanish fiction, is a professor of Spanish at Bennington College in Vermont. ­Additional research interests include sequential art, twentieth- and twenty-­ first-century Peninsular film, trauma, collective memory and forgetting, migration, monstrosity and gender and identity studies. Her PhD in Hispanic languages and literatures and MA in Spanish are from UCLA. She was recipient of the José Monleón post­doctoral fellowship for research and teaching and a visiting researcher in Spanish literature at the Universidad de Oviedo.

Chapter 9

Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa (2015) as Architectural Elegy Benjamin Fraser

Francisco Martínez Roca (1969–) has crafted an important body of work dating from the 1990s and has gained increasing attention during the 2000s. Perhaps most significantly, his graphic novel Arrugas [­Wrinkles] (2008) – first published as Rides (2007) in France, where it won recognition as one of the top twenty of the year – received two awards in Spain and has been translated into Dutch, English, Finnish, Italian and Japanese.1 La casa [The 1 Paco Roca, Arrugas (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2008). Earlier in his career, for example, Roca worked on Comix Kiss Comix and El Víbora. For the broader context on the comics industry in Spain, see Viviane Alary, ed., Historietas, cómics y tebeos españoles [Comics, comics and comics from Spain], prologue by Román Gubern (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2002); Pablo Dopico, El cómic underground español, 1970–1980 [The Spanish underground comic] (Madrid: Cátedra, 2005); Santiago García, La novela gráfica [The graphic novel] (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2010); Luis Gasca and Román Gubern, El Discurso del cómic [Comics discourse], 4th ed. (Madrid: Cátedra, 2001); Ana Merino, El cómic hispánico [The Hispanic comic] (Madrid: Cátedra, 2002). On the cultural period of La Movida, in which Roca and other graphic artists came of age as artists, see ­Malcolm Alan Compitello, ‘Sketching the Future Furiously: La Movida, Graphic Design and the Urban



Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa as Architectural Elegy 183

house], originally published in 2015, is yet another of the author’s widely translated award-winning titles.2 The Bilbao-based publishing house Astiberri has released the comic in Spanish, Catalan and Basque editions. Moreover, La casa has received the Mejor Cómic Nacional [Nation’s Best Comic] of 2015 designation from the CEGAL (Confederación Española de Gremios y Asociaciones de Libreros [Spanish Confederation of Bookseller Guilds and Associations]), the Premio Zona Cómic [Comic Zone Award] for 2016 and the ‘Star 2016’ (best comic of the year) designation from Le Parisien for the French edition, La Maison, published by Delcourt. In La casa’s brief epilogue, the famed contemporary Spanish novelist Fernando Marías admits the possibility of a variety of perspectives on the graphic novel but underscores the one he regards as essential: ‘Paco Roca ha hecho un libro a partir de los sentimientos generados por la muerte de su padre. ¿Puede haber dieciocho palabras que llamen con más seducción a leer La casa? Yo creo que no’ [Paco Roca has crafted a (comic) book based on the feelings generated by the death of his father. Can there be eighteen words that call more seductively for a reading of La casa? I think not].3 A black-and-white photograph of Roca and his father sitting together on a bench appears after La casa’s last page, before Marías’s onepage epilogue, leaving no doubt about the work’s genesis and its personal meaning for the artist.4 The comic is clearly motivated by the personal experience of grieving, and the artist’s decision Process in Madrid’, in Toward a Cultural Archive of La Movida: Back to the Future, ed. William J. Nichols and H. Rosi Song (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2014), 203–232. On Roca’s other works, see Jesús Cuadrado, De la historieta y su uso, 1873–2000 [On the comic and its use] (Madrid: Ediciones Sinsentido, 2000). All translations of non-English references and quotations are my own unless otherwise indicated. 2 Paco Roca, La casa, 2nd ed. (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2016). 3 Fernando Marías, ‘Epílogo,’ in Roca, La casa, 131. As Marías well knows – he has no need to make this explicit for the graphic novel’s intended readership – one of the most recognised literary landmarks of this theme of a father’s death is a canonical fifteenth-century poetic text by Jorge Manrique (ca. 1440–1479). Marías’s statement that ‘la muerte del padre es un tema mayor de la literatura’ [the death of the father is a major theme of literature] recalls Manrique through his conspicuous absence. See Frank Domínguez, Love and Remembrance: The Poetry of Jorge Manrique (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988); Richard P. Kinkade, ‘The Historical Date of the Coplas and the Death of Jorge Manrique’, Speculum 45, no. 2 (1970), 216–224; María Inés Zaldívar, ‘La negación que afirma: Una possible y parcial lectura de Coplas a la muerte de su padre de Jorge Manrique’ [The negation that affirms: A possible and partial reading of Coplas on the death of his father by Jorge Manrique], Taller de Letras 45 (2009), 33–51. 4 See ‘“La casa”, de Paco Roca, Mejor Cómic Nacional de 2015’ [‘La casa’, by Paco Roca, best national comic of 2015], El País (9 March 2016), http://cultura.elpais.com/ cultura/2016/03/09/actualidad/1457542701_126534.html.

184

Benjamin Fraser

to publicise these experiences might also be seen as part of the process of working through the stages of grief.5 La casa is largely focalised through the experiences of father ­A ntonio’s adult children. After the patriarch’s death, the three siblings (Vicente, José, Carla) and their families (including grandchild Juan) visit the house that Antonio constructed as a second home and lived in during his final years. Setting this story in motion, the sounds and dialogue we read against the dark pen strokes on the third page of the comic announce the arrival of son José and his wife, Silvia, to the unlit house sometime after the death of José’s father.6 Readers follow as the families of these siblings attempt to fix the house up for future sale, and the novel ends with the house listed on the market.7 As the siblings prepare the house for sale, they work through their individual and collective grief, exploring their own memories of Antonio in decided connection to the house’s specific rooms, spaces and dimensions. Their collaboration on an architectural addition to the house takes centre stage as the graphic novel reaches its final pages. Antonio had always hoped to build a pérgola toscana [a projecting roof in the Tuscan style] to provide shade over the outdoor patio area where the family would gather for meals, but he never found the time to purchase the ma­terials much less to complete the project. The siblings’ completion of this architectural structure has a cathartic function regarding their shared processes of grief. In addition to mediating the emotional tensions between the adult children, this construction project also pulls the architectural structure and theme of the graphic novel towards a narrative resolution that is equally cathartic for readers. Given La casa’s forging of strong visual connections between themes of space, place and remembrance, it is tempting to explore the graphic novel’s potential contribution to wider discussions on ‘places of memory’. Nevertheless, I insist that Roca’s clear intention to focus on the small scale of the family is decisive. He casts the house as a visual space of reflection that remains relatively autono­ mous from events of a larger regional, national or inter­national scale. It is thus comparatively difficult to connect this particular comic with sociopolitical and historical considerations that have become commonplace in analyses of visual culture in Spain after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco on 20 November 5 Implicit in this comment is a reference to the five-stage model of grief famously developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. 6 Roca, La casa, 7. 7 Ibid., 124.



Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa as Architectural Elegy 185

1975. 8 Roca himself had pursued the theme of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) in Los surcos del azar [The furrows of fate], for example, which won the Zona Cómic [Comic Zone] prize in 2014.9 Yet it is significant here that the space in which La casa’s visual diegesis unfolds is a family-owned private rural lot. While various areas adjacent to the lot figure somewhat routinely in the story (the trash bin on the bordering street and the neighbour’s yard), more distant spaces (namely the hospital in which the father received treatment towards the end of his life) appear infrequently and only as memories prompted by their connection with people and places observed on the premises. Roca’s telling of this story through the traditionally personal medium of the independent comic album itself foregrounds the more intimate resonance of the theme of grief. Overall, then, La casa connects less with historical theorisations of lieux de mémoire [places of memory] and perhaps a bit more with the burgeoning interest in environmental autobiography.10 Roca’s representation of personal grief unfolds in the form of what I term an architectural elegy. By this, I mean that readers are themselves participants in the narrative construction of a reflection on grief that is explicitly guided by architectural tropes of construction. These visual tropes and their innovative formal structure on the page forge an intimate bond, prompting readers to share in the emotional journeys of the graphic novel’s characters. In truth, this approach is somewhat distinct from existing comics criticism that links the medium to the extensive literature on social space. It is significant, for example, that book-length publications such as Comics and the City, edited by Jörn Ahrens and Arno Meteling, and Comic Book Geographies, edited by Jason Dittmer, have brought attention to the links between text-image combinations in comics and broader social geographies.11 Nevertheless, this chapter is more 8 On this period in comics history in Spain, see Alary, Historietas, cómics y tebeos españoles; Dopico, El cómic underground español; Francisca Lladó Pol, Los cómics de la Transición (el boom del cómic adulto 1975–84) [Comics of the Transition (the adult comic boom)] (Barcelona: Ediciones Glénat, 2001); Pedro Pérez del Solar, Imágenes del desencanto: Nueva historieta española 1980–1986 [Images of dis­enchantment: The new Spanish comic] (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2013). 9 Note, too, that Roca’s earlier graphic novel, Los surcos del azar (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2013), was about his father’s life and experiences in the Spanish Civil War. 10 A good point of entry into the work on environmental autobiography is Jen Jack Gieseking and William Mangold, eds, with Cindi Katz, Setha Low and Susan Saegert, The People Place and Space Reader (New York: Routledge, 2014). In particular, the essays collected in section 3 on ‘Place and Identity’ provide insights into how place and identity are mutually constitutive on a smaller scale. 11 Jörn Ahrens and Arno Meteling, eds, Comics and the City: Urban Space in Print, Picture and Sequences (London: Continuum, 2010); Jason Dittmer, ed., Comic Book Geographies (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2014). For a look at how themes

186

Benjamin Fraser

interested in the links between La casa’s theme of architecture as represented at the levels of content and narrative and the architectural structure of its highly innovative page layouts. More relevant to Roca’s graphic novel than the aforementioned spatial approaches are the comments made by the comics scholar Andrei Molotiu regarding ‘iconostasis’, which he defines as ‘the perception of the layout of a comics page as a unified composition; perception which prompts us not so much to scan the comic from panel to panel in the accepted direction of reading, but to take it in at a glance, the way we take in an abstract painting’. Interestingly, Molotiu draws from studies of the iconography of choir screens in Greek-Orthodox churches to stress the novelty of an arrangement in which ‘icons are arranged in a grid, yet they are not intended to be read sequentially’. He argues that artists like Chris Ware, for example, ‘have emphasized the iconostasis by unifying their pages compositionally – for example, through compositional lines that carry from panel to panel, or through balance or symmetry – and even texturally. (. . .) We can refer to this tendency as ‘iconostatization,’ the move of a comic toward the stasis of an icon’.12 Though Molotiu does not emphasise architecture in particular, his observations nonetheless suggest parallels with the field’s humanistic roots and emphasis on interconnected but relatively autonomous aesthetic qualities. Outside of the context of comics, the appreciation of architectural form tends to be rooted in the observer’s holistic and self-directed visual perusal of individual elements, which are integrated into a larger project. La casa’s tendency towards iconostasis replicates this visual process of synthesising part and whole through relying on the relative autonomy of panels. of space/place and architecture figure in analyses of comics in general, interested readers may consult Jason Dittmer, ‘Narrating Urban Assemblages: Chris Ware and Building Stories’, Social and Cultural Geography 15, no. 5 (2014), 477–503; Mark Feldman, ‘The Urban Studies of Ben Katchor’, in Teaching the Graphic Novel, ed. Stephen E. Tabachnick (New York: MLA Publications, 2009), 129–136; Benjamin Fraser, ‘Comics Art and Urban Cultural Studies Method: Architectural Arthrology in Chris Ware’s Building Stories (2012)’, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies 3, no. 3 (2016), 291–299; Matt Godbey, ‘Chris Ware’s “Building Stories”, Gentrification, and the Lives of/in Houses’, in The Comics of Chris Ware, ed. David N. Ball and Martha B. Kuhlman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010), 121–132; Martin Lund, ‘“X Marks the Spot”: Urban Dys­topia, Slum Voyeurism and Failures of Identity in District X’, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies 2, nos 1–2 (2014), 35–55; Daniel Worden, ‘On Modernism’s Ruins: The Architecture of “Building Stories” and Lost Buildings’, in Ball and Kuhlman, The Comics of Chris Ware, 107–120. 12 Andrei Molotiu, ‘Abstract Form: Sequential Dynamism and Iconostasis in Abstract Comics and in Steve Ditko’s Amazing Spider-Man’, in Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods, ed. Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan (New York: Routledge, 2012), 84–100 (91).



Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa as Architectural Elegy 187

Roca’s innovative approach to comics form thus simultaneously serves as a visual metaphor reinforcing the themes of reconciliation amongst siblings and of the individual acceptance of grief stemming from the death of their father. This chapter’s first section closely analyses the first few pages of the graphic novel as representative examples of Roca’s style. ­Particular attention is given to the artist’s specific use of structural elements of visual narrative. The second section delves into the individual and collective grief experienced by Antonio’s three adult children, grandchild and neighbour as depicted in La casa. ­Remembrance here is shown to be not just temporal but also ­spatial/place-bound in nature, as evidenced in the semi-subjective strategy used by Roca to represent the memories of this ensemble cast and superimpose the space of past memory over the space of present experience.13

The Structure of Grief: Architectural Elements of Page Layout The first three pages of La casa are important, as they set up the central event of the father’s death and introduce us to the temporal and spatial context of La casa’s storyline. Perhaps most significantly, they highlight the variations of page layout – through both traditionally sequential and non-sequential iconostatic ­extremes – that are crucial to the graphic novel’s architectural theme and formal innovation. Evident is Roca’s ability to mobilise architectural properties of page layout and the multi­frame to reinforce and transmit to readers the intimate feelings of loss involved in a personal experience of grief. The comic’s very first drawn page (Illustration 9.1) exploits the nuance of visual representation to accomplish a number of interconnected goals: it introduces the father character, Antonio, whose death is central to the work; it establishes the theme of grief, demonstrates the signifying property of iconicity through which its meditation on grief will be carried out; and it illustrates the cumulative effect of iconic redundancy.14 It also showcases a page 13 For the cinematic transposition of Roca’s use of semi-subjective scenes, see ­Benjamin Fraser, ‘Senescence, Alzheimer’s Dementia and the Semi-subjective in Ignacio ­Ferreras’s Film Arrugas [Wrinkles] (2011)’, Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 10, no. 1 (2016), 21–35. 14 Roca, La casa, 5; Barbara Postema, Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments (Rochester: Rochester Institute of Technology Press, 2013), 46–47. Note that iconic redundancy is an effect that only appears as such in graphic novels and not literature composed in written language alone. On the similar

188

Benjamin Fraser

Illustration 9.1. Antonio ‘exits stage left’ on the graphic novel’s first page (Roca, La casa, 5). Reproduced with the kind permission of Paco Roca.

layout that is highly irregular in its regularity – one whose form is quite dissimilar to the irregular forms used in the majority of the comic’s pages. That is, the page consists of twelve square panels of identical dimension arranged in three rows and four columns. Roca thus begins a comic on unconventional layouts with a strictly linear left-to-right, top-to-bottom sequence of what Scott McCloud calls moment-to-moment transitions.15 Twelve panels feature a static framing of a kitchen with sink, window, cabinets and – on the left – an open door leading to the outdoor space surrounding the titular house.16 The father character is absent from the first of these twelve panels, but the next nine in a row show him pulling his arm through his jacket in the final stages of preparing to leave the house. This is an everyday scene captured in a purple wash, one of many colour washes used by Roca throughout the text.17 Evenly spaced panels and their repterm iconic solidarity, see Thierry Groensteen, The System of Comics, trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2007), 17–20. 15 Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (New York: Harper Collins, 1994), 70–74. 16 Roca, La casa, 5. 17 I speculate that these washes presumably function to heighten the reader’s emotional response, and that they often – but not always – serve to suggest an event in the past.



Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa as Architectural Elegy 189

resented content work together to suggest equal temporal intervals between each of the twelve frames much in the style of late nineteenth-­century photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s now classic motion studies – of moments in the sequential trot of a horse, for example. The drawn doorway in this sequence itself symbolises passage, but amongst the objects visible in the kitchen scene there is ­nothing that directly indicates death or dying specifically. What is arguably most decisive is the absence of Antonio in the two final frames of the twelve-panel sequences at the bottom right. He thus effectively dies in the comic’s ‘gutter’ in the process of moving from the first recto page towards the entirely white verso page on the left. The direction of this movement on the page also connotes that he is exiting the graphic novel. One might say, reading his movement within the context of La casa’s multiframe,18 that ­A ntonio ‘exits stage left’. Though this first page arrangement may be taken as conventional in the context of Western comics in general, throughout La casa specifically Roca prefers to use a page layout that is not necessarily read left-to-right and top-to-bottom, but that employs relatively autonomous sequences. These read either left-to-right or top-to-bottom in a way that foregrounds either linear (vertical or horizontal) or geometrical (L-shaped) reading patterns. This effects a disconnection between the x-axis and the y-axis of the page layout, such that the presentation of the story – what Thierry Groensteen calls the breakdown in comics form19 – is subject to a logic that seems to be incomplete or unfinished. Most frequently, axes of row and column are distinguishable on the page and must be followed in either one sequence or another (e.g. Illustration 9.2). 20 This choice requires that readers more actively participate in the construction of the story in their engagement with the page, thus dovetailing with the self-directed appreciation of architectural form, the iconostatic composition of the page that privileges holistic impressions over linearity, and the individualised emotional process of working through the stages of grief. The following verso page of the graphic novel (Illustration 9.3) is an example of this architectural form of page construction. 21 Implementing the relative autonomy of horizontal and vertical axes mentioned above, it consists of a three-panel, top-to-bottom sequence along the left vertical margin of the page, with a square 18 See Groensteen, The System of Comics, 30–31. 19 Ibid., 117–121. 20 Roca, La casa, 65. 21 Ibid., 6.

190

Benjamin Fraser

Illustration 9.2. Relatively autonomous x-axis and y-axis, L-shape reading patterns (Roca, La casa, 65). Reproduced with the kind permission of Paco Roca.

of four panels at right whose reading axis (whether horizontal or vertical) is ambiguous. That is, the four panels work equally well for readers who pursue the images in left-to-right rows and those who, following the example of the three-panel sequence at left, read the columns from top to bottom. No matter which path of reading is pursued, each image contributes to the fashioning of a larger scene whose elements exist simultaneously. This relative freedom from sequential reading is helped by the decisive absence of text throughout the page. Though collectively the panels imply the passage of time on a cyclical time scale, a strictly sequential reading of the panels is thus subordinated to a holistic view of the page. This is a clear example of the tendency towards iconostasis identified by Molotiu in the context of abstract comics, which need not depend upon the total absence of sequence, but instead merely depend upon its frustration by the possibility of an alternative non-linear reading of the page.22 As a parenthesis between the first and third drawn pages, the second page’s formal deviation serves to highlight Roca’s choice to return to a standard twelve-panel layout. 22 Molotiu, ‘Abstract Form’, 93. He writes that ‘iconostatic perception, rather than conflicting with sequential dynamism, is a prerequisite for it; the two go hand in hand’.



Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa as Architectural Elegy 191

Illustration 9.3. Wordless panels and page layout tending towards Molotiu’s icono­stasis (Roca, La casa, 6). Reproduced with the kind permission of Paco Roca.

The third drawn page (Illustration 9.4) recapitulates the layout of the first, and calls attention to the comic’s larger multiframe.23 Twelve identical panels are arranged in three rows and four columns. The panels all contain scribbled, chaotic dark lines against a purple-wash background with no discernible shapes or iconic representations. Only the final five contain sound effects (‘crak, crek’ [creak, squeak]) and word-balloon dialogue between two people whose figures cannot be seen (‘¿Estás seguro de que es ésa la llave?’ / ‘Sí, claro. No puede ser otra’ [Are you sure that this is the (right) key? / Yes, of course. This has to be it]). The rest are wordless. Furthermore, because Roca has moved beyond the conventional left-to-right reading pattern on the prior page, here readers may experience confusion about how to read – they may wonder whether to follow along a horizontal or vertical axis, for example. This confusion acquires a certain significance based on the concrete location of this sequence within the book’s multiframe. Both twelve-panel layouts mentioned here are recto pages,24 such that in flipping from one to the other, the panelled images of the father in his kitchen are substituted in the reader’s visual field precisely by panelled images of equal dimensions depicting only darkness. 23 Roca, La casa, 7. 24 Ibid., 5, 7.

192

Benjamin Fraser

Illustration 9.4. Roca’s use of the page flip relies on twelve identical panel shapes to ‘erase’ Antonio’s presence (Roca, La casa, 7; cf. La casa, 5). Reproduced with the kind permission of Paco Roca.

Purple wash on the first page is occluded by dark pen strokes on the third. Presence becomes absence, and the depiction of Antonio’s life on one page is effectively erased on the next. What was originally the iconic depiction of a human figure is now replaced by what is merely a disembodied verbal echo of human language. For readers, the visual erasure of the figure of Antonio during the flip of a page conveys, by way of comics form, the children’s loss of their father. Beyond these early pages, the theme of architecture and construction easily predominates throughout La casa, as one would expect even from a glance at the comic’s title. Visually speaking, these themes are omnipresent throughout the novel as action is concentrated in the indoor and outdoor spaces of the house. For example, at one point readers experience a long sequence in which Vicente and his son Juan use a ladder to fix the house’s roof.25 Each panel in this sequence is stretched thin from the top to the bottom of the page, mirroring the ladder composition and showcasing the height of the house. When Vicente and Juan fix the outdoor stone wall on the property, the panels instead tend more towards a tra 25 Ibid., 61–63.



Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa as Architectural Elegy 193

ditional strip format in horizontal axis. 26 In this case, a narrow top strip of panels is connected through word balloons to a taller strip of panels underneath that begins in yellow wash and recalls periodic maintenance work on the second home by family members. Intriguingly, in both cases the panel composition and the page layout tend to reinforce the architectural specificity of the type of construction depicted, drawing parallels between visual and material structures. Elsewhere, for example, we see an extensive depiction of scaffolding that serves as another visual echo of the non-traditional, and non-linear, architectural structure of Roca’s comic’s pages.27

The Dynamics of Grief: Spaces of Memory and Narrative Resolution The structural and thematic impact of architecture and construction throughout La casa is important not only at the level of page layout but also at the level of interconnectivity: it contributes to two other related matters. On one hand, there is the matter of how the graphic novel employs the semi-subjective to stress the ties between grief, memory and space/place, and on the other there is how its cathartic narrative privileges the siblings’ construction of an arbour as a tribute to their father, and as a reinforcement of the architectural theme. The first matter concerns the way in which memories of the graphic novel’s characters are intimately connected with specific spaces. Remembrance is presented in La casa not as a transcendent experience that dislocates those who remember the past from their present context, but rather as an activity that is intimately connected with the spatial and architectural elements of the present. To put this in other terms, characters draw on the specificity of their surrounding place in order to reconstruct the past. In this way, grief is intimately connected not merely with feelings of loss but also with a spatial memory that endures and perhaps even resides in specific locations. Recalling the ensemble nature of Paco Roca’s earlier comic Arrugas, which allowed for semi-subjective representations of the points of view of a number of secondary characters, La casa is similarly structured to showcase the grief and remembrance of many.28 All action in the graphic novel unfolds at 26 Ibid., 75–79. 27 Ibid., 87–90. 28 See Gregorio Belinchón, ‘Paco Roca homenajea a su padre a través de “La casa”’ [Paco Roca pays homage to his father in ‘La casa’], El País, (20 November 2015),

194

Benjamin Fraser

Antonio’s residence, but interestingly, too, remembrances related to the grief of characters also unfold in spatial relationship to the property on which the titular house sits. 29 Roca thus frequently represents both an ‘objective’ portrayal of the character who is doing the remembering at the same time that we see a ‘subjective’ memory of what that character remembers. Such semi-subjective representations entail the superimposition of a scene from the past onto the present and thus require the space of memory to match exactly the character’s current spatial location in the present. One example of this semi-subjective perspective – which requires a concordance between space of memory and spatial ­present – involves Vicente. Towards the middle of the graphic novel, he stares out the window of the house and sees himself as a young child working with his father to set lines demarcating the plot for the house.30 Here, Roca slowly and unobtrusively phases in a light yellow colour wash to indicate a transition from the present moment to the space of memory. Against a landscape devoid of human figures, the end of the sequence includes words voiced by Vicente’s father so many years ago – ‘Hay unas vistas estupendas. Se ve hasta el mar’ [There are some marvellous views. One can see all the way to the sea] – words whose recall prompted the sequence’s beginning as they echoed in Vicente’s head – ‘Siguen siendo unas vistas increíbles . . . Se ve hasta el mar y . . .’ [They are still incredible views . . . One can see to the sea and . . .].31 This textual echo reinforces the visual echo and contributes to Vicente’s spatially encoded remembrance of his father. The ellipses create a textual space into which Antonio’s memory encroaches.

http://­c ultura.elpais.com/cultura/2015/11/30/actualidad/1448908973_011049. html. The author quotes from Paco Roca, who says that ‘en realidad Arrugas y La casa están conectados. Si el primero describe la vejez de mis padres, este analiza su muerte’ [in reality, Arrugas and La casa are connected. If the former describes the old age of my parents, this one analyses their death]. 29 An important exception is when Antonio’s neighbour Manolo shares with José and Silvia a story that he was told by their father explaining the latter’s fondness for a fig tree (Roca, La casa, 41–47). Antonio’s memories of his own childhood are narrated by Manolo in a flashback. This is one of the few times that the represented action goes beyond the spatial location of the house and its adjacent properties. 30 Roca, La casa, 56–59. Here, a full-page panel (58) harkens back to the raccord or seamless unpanelled movement through space that can be seen in Frank King’s ‘Gasoline Alley,’ for example – see the discussion and image in Daniel Raeburn, Chris Ware (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 13. Later on, Roca’s art is striking in an inverse way in its use of gutters to split up a single image (La casa, 86). 31 Roca, La casa, 59, 56.



Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa as Architectural Elegy 195

Illustration 9.5. The use of the semi-subjective viewpoint relies on the superimposition of past and present over the same space – Carla’s father Antonio only appears to readers as focalised through her memory (Roca, La Casa, 83). Reproduced with the kind permission of Paco Roca.

Forced to attempt a backyard squat while his father works on the toilet indoors, Vicente’s son Juan remembers a time when he helped his grandfather pick rosemary on the property for one of his grandmother’s meals.32 Readers see Juan simultaneously at two ages in four distinct panels along with the memory of his grandfather, thus rendering the cinematic semi-subjective viewpoint in the artistic form of comics. Later, Carla interacts with her young daughter underneath the orange tree adjacent to the house and wishes that her father could have been there, too. In one panel (Illustration 9.5),33 we see the figure of Antonio holding on to a branch at the same time that the child picks an orange off the tree. The appearance of this figure is not marked in any way and thus functions as a semi-subjective presentation of the feeling of loss wrapped up in Carla’s grieving process. Importantly, the panel featuring Antonio’s sudden presence is followed by a remembrance sequence in yellow wash that captures Carla as a young child herself at the same orange tree on the property.34 32 Ibid., 72. 33 Ibid., 83. 34 Ibid., 83–85.

196

Benjamin Fraser

Another intriguing instance of Roca’s artistic marking of narrative transitions to places of subjective memory occurs when José arrives at the house with Silvia at the beginning of the graphic novel.35 Here, the page layout is carefully structured in a way that showcases the architectural intersections of horizontal and vertical axes. José ventures outside and puts a hand on the bare patio table, thus implicating the tactile experience of place in the activity of remembrance. What follows are eight subsequent panels in a pink wash that recall for readers a dinner outside on the patio – his father’s preferred gathering place. All three siblings are in attendance. It is mentioned both that it is Antonio’s birthday and that during this remembered moment their father is still alive and in fact inside the house in the bathroom. This formal transition into the space of memory is important not just for its passage from a sunlit day towards a prominent pink colour wash but also in terms of the panel structure of the five panels on the page. At left are two panels of three-quarter-page width in two rows. At right, there are three panels in vertical sequence. The top two of these, when put together, align neatly with the height of the first-row panel at left (thus, each occupies exactly half of the row’s height). The third panel below them is itself the same size as the top two put together (it is equivalent to the entire height of the second-row panel at left). The reading works left-to-right by row: first the top (with a slight stutter step as readers assimilate the two images at top right) and then the bottom (followed by the third panel in the vertical run at the right margin on the page). But there is an ambiguity on the page – the vertical gutter used to separate the panels runs the height of the entire page. Thus, once readers start to move vertically down the vertical row of two panels at right, they are tempted to move downwards to the third and final panel, potentially skipping the three-quarter-width panel to the left on the second row. Once again, this is an example of iconostatisation and its frustration of linear reading patterns. José’s hand on the table occurs in the top-right panel, a spread of food on the patio table is depicted in the middle-­r ight panel, and the third panel features Vicente saying ‘Todos aquí esperando y él como siempre, a la suya’ [All of us are here waiting, and as always he’s doing his own thing].36 The transition between natural sunlight and the pink wash is evident in the middle-right panel, and the pink wash is evident throughout the entire second row on the page, thus encouraging readers to move down the vertical column instead of returning to the left margin 35 Ibid., 10–11. 36 Ibid., 10.



Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa as Architectural Elegy 197

for a row-by-row read.37 It is thus significant that readers arrive at the fifth and last panel on the page in one or both of two ways. The ambiguity in page layout causes confusion, opening up the conventional reading process considerably along a strictly geometrical pattern of x-axis and y-axis and again testifying to qualities of iconostasis noted by Molotiu. This freedom of reading path underscores the architectural role of, in this case, the bottom corner panel on the page. This panel gains strength, like the corner of a building, from its position at the intersection of two distinct reading planes. As with the cornerstone connecting and strengthening the adjacent walls of a house, this ‘corner panel’ provides an architectural anchor of sorts for the page, lending balance to the layout as a whole by distributing the visual weight throughout its structure.38 A second consideration also involves the outdoor patio. While Antonio worked years earlier to instal a rudimentary pergola, one that can be seen early on in the novel, he dreamt of building a specific model of a pérgola toscana, as José soon discovers.39 Much of the emotional impact of La casa’s treatment of grief comes from the fact that Antonio’s three adult children work together to fulfil his dream to construct this structure. Both the first and second structures boast relatively simple geometrical designs (with vertical supports and horizontal beams),40 a fact that reinforces the primary architectural theme of La casa’s page layouts. It is explicitly remarked that the original rudimentary pergola is all the father could do on his own without the help of his children.41 Ultimately, the new pérgola toscana takes on a symbolic role in the graphic novel – its construction parallels the siblings’ reconstruction of their strained relationships in a scene that delivers a particularly cathartic impact. As revealed through dialogue and visual characterisation, the siblings have grief experiences that might be taken to be relatively common. The significance of these grief experiences, however, comes from how they unfold within a specific set of family circumstances. José must reconcile the experience of his elderly father’s infirmity with the naïve and inflated image of Antonio he held as a child and later as an adult.42 While 37 Though I concentrate here on the structure of the page layout, it is important to see that this reinforced panel in the lower right highlights the theme of Vicente’s complex emotions surrounding his father, which continue after death and impact his grieving process. The last pink-wash panel on the subsequent page (Roca, La casa, 11) echoes these sentiments. 38 This pattern repeats elsewhere in the graphic novel (e.g. Roca, La casa, 22). 39 Roca, La casa, 10, 51. 40 See, in particular, the diagram in Roca, La casa, 102. 41 Ibid., 37. 42 Ibid., 29, 18, 19, respectively.

198

Benjamin Fraser

José feels that his father was not proud of his accomplishments as a novelist, he is finally corrected by neighbour Manolo who – speaking of the news clippings that José sent his father about his accomplishments – informs him that ‘Pues le gustaba hacerse el importante enseñándome esos papeles’ [Well, he liked to seem important by showing me those papers].43 Vicente feels that he assumed too much of the responsibility for caring for his father.44 He seems to blame José for being distant and is perhaps inattentive to the fact that Carla feels that she also assumed too much of a burden with her responsibilities for doctor’s visits and for paperwork.45 Carla additionally regrets not being able to be with her father at the very end of his life.46 Having built up these complex emotions over the course of the graphic novel, Roca finally has the three adult children talk about their grief in a vertical sequence that implies significant dialogue over time (Illustration 9.6).47 The siblings’ disagreement over decisions made regarding Antonio’s end of life48 – including the complex emotions each has experienced individually – is ultimately resolved. This resolution is conveyed through three distinguishable panel frames that represent a single unified image of an outdoor stairway on the property and that are connected through vertical trails of word balloons that are traceable to distinct characters. When readers reach the bottom of the vertical staircase sequence, the emotional weight of the dialogue is reinforced by the combined visual presence of the three siblings, who now share the frame for the very first time in the graphic novel. Most importantly, after starting work on the new pérgola toscana the siblings begin to share their memories collectively. The comics form here shifts markedly from a previous emphasis on spaces of individual memory and the semi-subjective viewpoint towards a more collective interconnection of experience. José shares a memory of an occasion when his father connected a television to his car battery during a blackout so that the youngster could watch football; Carla recalls a day when the three siblings took a bath in a barrel outside; and Vicente remembers washing a car with his

43 Ibid., 40. 44 Ibid., 73–74. 45 Ibid., 109–116. 46 Ibid., 92–94. 47 Ibid., 99. It is also significant that, as in Arrugas, he uses the iconic representation of a stairway on the house property to symbolise change through architectural means. 48 Ibid., 91–94, 96–99.



Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa as Architectural Elegy 199

Illustration 9.6. At left, the vertical sequence’s raccord leads to all three siblings sharing the same frame and working through their shared g ­ rieving processes (Roca, La casa, 99). Reproduced with the kind permission of Paco Roca.

father next to the house.49 These memories are shared in relatively quick succession as the siblings work to construct the pergola. The page layouts for each of these shared memory sequences are consistent and well ordered: a vertical sequence of three panels at left, a duplication of this sequence at right, and in the middle a larger panel of page height with a subjective view of the memory. Significantly, too, in each of the vertical sequences on the right is an individual panel that also depicts an aspect of the memory. ­Notably again, regarding the tendency towards iconostasis in La casa, the effect of these somewhat non-sequitur images – respectively, a starry night, a child’s feet through the water in the barrel, and a tightly framed image of the shiny car post-wash – is to disrupt a strictly sequential reading of the page. The thematic concordances between large central panels and smaller panels at right indicates that these memories – by the very fact that they are being shared amongst the siblings – are finding a foothold in the present moment and in the present sibling relationships. After completing the construction project, the siblings sit down underneath it to eat 49 Ibid., 103, 104, 105.

200

Benjamin Fraser

a meal, as their father would have wanted.50 The siblings’ collaboration on the construction of the pérgola toscana is thus ultimately a plot device that lends a certain dynamism to the graphic novel’s architectural concerns and carries out its resolution of the emotions associated with family grief.

Conclusion This chapter has argued that the theme of the house as a ­structure (including its indoor and outdoor spaces) and the architectural sympathies of La casa’s visual representation strategies (including page layout and multiframe) work in parallel to reinforce a theme of architectural elegy. Grief is intimately connected to the speci­ ficity of space/place and to the unique textures of architectural arrangements. La casa uses architecture as a resolution of grief at two levels – linking both character psychology and the reader’s experience with a singular grieving process. In this sense, the statement by one of the siblings that ‘no necesitamos esta casa para acordarnos de papá’ [we don’t need this house in order to remember dad]51 comes across as more than slightly disingenuous in that the comic’s visual-architectural elegy contradicts this statement. The power of Roca’s visual narrative comes from the way in which the artist synthesises architectural form and comics style in order to call attention back to its central meditation on grief. The graphic ­novel’s tendency towards iconostasis, how it uses innovative page layouts that mimic architectural styles of reading, and the manner in which it opens up semi-subjective spaces of reflection for characters and readers alike, is ultimately decisive in conveying the self-direction implicit in the process of grieving. While the comic itself points to the links between the complex emotions connected with grief, it is interesting to know that space was also important for the artist’s creation of La casa. Roca has revealed that the house was itself a crucial site in his composition of the work: ‘Nosotros al final no vendimos la casa, es más, he pasado allí estos dos últimos veranos para crear esta obra, porque sólo allí podría dibujarla’ [In the end, we didn’t sell the house, and what is more, I spent the last two summers there working to produce this creation (La casa), because it was only there that I could draw it].52 50 Ibid., 106–107. The choice of reheated pizzas is significant, as it refers back to a judgement on José’s poor eating habits and displaces our attention towards the overall scene of familial conviviality. What is eaten matters less than the experience of togetherness. 51 Ibid., 121. 52 Quoted in Belinchón, ‘Paco Roca homenajea’.



Paco Roca’s Graphic Novel La casa as Architectural Elegy 201

Benjamin Fraser is a professor of Hispanic studies in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at East Carolina University. He is the author of Toward an Urban Cultural Studies: Henri Lefebvre and the Humanities (Palgrave, 2015) and Disability Studies and Spanish Culture: Films, Novels, the Comic, and the Public Exhibition (Liverpool University Press, 2013). He is the executive editor of the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, a senior editor of the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, editor-in-chief of Hispania and co-editor of the Hispanic Urban Studies book series.

Chapter 10

Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Spanish Graphic Novels Agatha Mohring

The rise of the graphic novel in Spain dates from the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first ­century.1 Among Spanish graphic novels, intimate, autobiographical or auto-­ fictional subjects predominate. 2 These empathic works bear an etiqueta de cómic social [social comic label]3 and look at society, marginality, difference, neurodiversity and illness with both a critical

1 Dani Gómez and Josep Rom, ‘La novela gráfica: Un cambio de horizonte en la industria del cómic’ [The graphic novel: A change of horizon in the comic industry], Tebeosfera 10 (2012). 2 Viviane Alary and Danielle Corrado, ‘L’autobiographie dessinée en terres ibériques’ [The autobiography drawn in Iberian lands], Autobio-graphismes: Bande dessinée et représentation de soi [Autobio-graphics: Comic strip and self-representation], ed. ­Viviane Alary, Danielle Corrado and Benoît Mitaine (Chêne-Bourg: Éditeur Georg, 2015), 80–103 (88). 3 Paco Roca and Miguel Gallardo, Emotional World Tour (Bilbao: Astiberri Ediciones, 2009), 4. See also Alary and Corrado, ‘L’autobiographie dessinée’, 90. All translations in this chapter are my own unless otherwise indicated.



Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Graphic Novels 203

and a sensitive eye.4 The seeds of this thematic orientation can be traced back to the worldwide social criticism and underground movements of the 1960s, 5 as well as to autobiographical comic books from the 1980s.6 However, it really flourished in Spain at the beginning of the twenty-first century, thanks to graphic novels like María y yo by Miguel and María Gallardo 7 and Arrugas by Paco Roca.8 These two books deal with autism and Alzheimer’s disease, respectively. They aim to deconstruct social representations and challenge preconceived ideas. They were published by Astiberri Ediciones and Sinsentido, two innovative publishing houses specialised in graphic novels,9 and are now considered a key editorial turning point, since they exemplify thematic, media-friendly and commercial change. Because of their subject matter, they have been referred to as cómic social or cómic sensible.10 But they can also be considered ‘pathographies’, the term used by Anne Hunsaker Hawkins in a foundational article to denote ‘auto­biographical accounts of [. . .] experience of illness and treatment’.11 Pathographies, which Hawkins also calls ‘autopathographies’, have become known as ‘graphic medicine’ when in comics format, a term coined by Ian Williams.12 They may be partly fictional,13 4 Isabelle Touton, ‘Apuntes sobre el realismo en las narraciones visuales actuales: El ejemplo de la adaptación cinematográfica del cómic María y yo de Miguel Gallardo por Félix Fernández Castro’ [Notes on realism in current visual narratives: The example of the film adaptation of Miguel Gallardo’s comic María y yo by Félix Fernández Castro], Pasavento: Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 2 (2014): 77–99 (89). 5 Jan Baetens and Hugo Frey, The Graphic Novel: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 55; Roger Sabin, Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels (London: Phaidon, 1996), 92. 6 Michael Chaney, ‘Terrors of the Mirror and the “Mise en Abyme” of Graphic Novel Autobiography’, College Literature 38, no. 3 (2011): 21–44 (30). 7 María Gallardo and Miguel Gallardo, María y yo (Bilbao: Astiberri Ediciones, 2007), published in English as María and Me: A Father, a Daughter (and Autism) (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2018). 8 Paco Roca, Arrugas (Bilbao: Astiberri Ediciones, 2007), published in English as Wrinkles (London: Knockabout, 2015). 9 Daniel Gómez Salamanca, ‘Tebeo, cómic y novela gráfica: La influencia de la novela gráfica en la industria del cómic en España’ (PhD diss., Ramon Llull University, 2013). 10 Roca and Gallardo, Emotional World Tour, 56. See also Touton, ‘Apuntes sobre el realismo’, 87–88. 11 Anne Hunsaker Hawkins, ‘Pathography: Patient Narratives of Illness’, Culture and Medicine 171 (1999): 127–129 (127). 12 Ian Williams, ‘Graphic Medicine: Comics as Medical Narrative’, Journal of Medical Humanities 38, no. 1 (2012): 21–27. For further information, see Ian Williams and M. K. Czerwiec’s website on Graphic Medicines, http://www.graphicmedicine.org. 13 M. K. Czerwiec and Michelle N. Huang, ‘Hospice Comics: Representations of Patient and Family Experience of Illness and Death in Graphic Novels’, Journal of Medical Humanities 38, no. 2 (2017): 95–113 (97).

204

Agatha Mohring

and aim ‘to give voice to individual illness experiences’.14 They are used to create empathy with the reader.15 Their story may deal with ‘mental illness, sexually transmitted diseases, obsessive compulsive disorders, and epilepsy’.16 Desmond Cole shows how the didactic dimension of graphic medicine developed during the 1970s and cites the pioneers Joyce Farmer and Lyn Chevely.17 But since the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-­ first century, graphic medicine tends to focus more on the intimate experience of illness18 and to question the possibilities the graphic novel medium offers,19 as we can see in María y yo, Arrugas and Una posibilidad entre mil, by Cristina Durán and Miguel Ángel Giner Bou.20 The three Spanish comics pathographies under discussion deal with varying subjects.21 In María y yo, Miguel Gallardo describes his daughter’s autism. Roca portrays various diseases afflicting the residents of the retirement home in Arrugas, of which the main one is ­A lzheimer’s. In Una posibilidad entre mil, Durán and Giner Bou recount the c­ erebral palsy of their daughter, Laia. According to the classification proposed by Pramod Nayar, these works are not auto/pathographies (his ­spelling) but rather pathographies, as their a­ uthors do not share the story of an illness (or a difference) that they themselves have suffered from. They focus on ‘somebody else’s – usually a loved one’s – illness’, 22 that of their child 14 Juliet McMullin, ‘Cancer and the Comics: Graphic Narratives and Biolegitimate Lives’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly 30, no. 2 (2016): 149–167 (149). 15 Ian Williams, ‘Autography as Auto-therapy: Psychic Pain and the Graphic Memoir’, Journal of Medical Humanities 32, no. 4 (2011): 353–366 (354). 16 McMullin, ‘Cancer and the Comics’, 150. 17 Desmond Cole, ‘Comic Relief’, Canadian Medical Association Journal 184, no. 6 (2012): 879–880 (880). 18 Hunsaker Hawkins, ‘Pathography’, 127–128. 19 We may for instance refer to the Medicine and Comics Conferences, held every year since 2010. http://www.graphicmedicine.org /comics-and-medicine-conferences. 20 First edition: Cristina Durán and Miguel Angel Giner Bou, Una posibilidad entre mil [One chance in a thousand] (Madrid: Sinsentido, 2009). Complete edition: Cristina Durán and Miguel Angel Giner Bou, Una posibilidad. Edición Integral (Bilbao: Astiberri Ediciones, 2017). 21 Even though the Spanish graphic novel influence on these three books is limited, we can point out foreign pathographies that might have inspired them, e.g. Joyce Brabner, Harvey Pekar and Frank Stack, Our Cancer Year (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994); David B., L’ascension du Haut Mal (Paris: L’Association, 1996), published in English as Epileptic, trans. Kim Thompson (New York: Pantheon, 2005); Frederik Peeters, Pilules bleues [Blue pills] (Genève: Atrabile, 2001); Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Cancer Vixen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006); Brian Fies, Mom’s Cancer (New York: Abrams Image, 2006). 22 Pramod K. Nayar, ‘Communicable Diseases: Graphic Medicine and the Extreme’, Journal of Creative Communications 10, no. 2 (2015): 161–175 (161).



Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Graphic Novels 205

or friend’s parents.23 What these graphic novels have in common is the fact that they tell the reader about autism, cerebral palsy and Alzheimer’s disease through the metaphor of the journey. This metaphor is used in different ways, which I will analyse. It is first linked with the idea of the discovery of the unknown and alterity, since María y yo, Arrugas and Una posibilidad entre mil enable readers to travel through strange places and times that make them aware of disease and difference. The three graphic novels also take inspiration from travel guides to find their way through alterity and better understand autism, cerebral palsy and ­A lzheimer’s disease. As a result, they construct an essential experience: self-­discovery, the experience of inner nature. I will consider how Miguel ­Gallardo, Roca, Durán and Giner Bou use a guidebook approach to subvert medical discourse and re­humanise it, standing up for a sensitive and empathic approach. Finally, I claim that the metaphor of the journey not only is a narrative pattern but can also have a curative and therapeutic dimension.

Considering Alzheimer’s, Autism and Cerebral Palsy as a Journey I will start with the first stages of the travel narrative: the discovery and exploration of the unknown, which lead to trials faced and personal apprenticeship of illness and difference.

Facing an Unknown World: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Nursery Sea The meeting, be it autobiographical or fictional, between the character and the unknown (alterity) is at the heart of the travel story, especially in comics that present ‘cette spécificité de mettre en scène un monde inconnu du voyageur’ [the specific feature of ­staging a world unknown to the traveller].24 The confrontation with an unknown world appears, in our three examples of graphic medi­ cine, through the particular connection established with the location symbolising the illness. In Una posibilidad entre mil, this is the hospital. Precisely detailed medical devices – leads and monitoring screens with an inhuman appearance surrounding Laia – symbolise the strangeness of this place. In the sequence of panels shown 23 See Roca and Gallardo, Emotional World Tour, 25–26. 24 David Vrydaghs, ‘Le récit de voyage en bande dessinée, entre autobiographie et reportage’ [The travelogue in comics, between autobiography and reportage], Textyles 36–37 (2010): 139–148 (147).

206

Agatha Mohring

Illustration 10.1. Cristina Durán and Miguel Ángel Giner Bou, Una posibilidad. Edición Integral (© Astiberri Ediciones, 2017).



Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Graphic Novels 207

in ifllustration 10.1, Laia is isolated: the possibility of reaching her is made difficult by the accumulation of medical devices, and the obstacle of the incubator glass. The colour contrast between the child’s brightness and the parents’ blackness emphasises the metaphorical and spatial gap between the baby and her parents. The opposition is increased by the fact that the reader cannot see Cristina and Miguel’s faces or their emotions. The symbolism of the colour and the refusal to draw their features and feelings counteracts Laia’s smile and happiness, suggesting the despair they do not want to show. The framing also serves to emphasise the mediated gaze, calling attention to the lack of intimacy due to the constant presence of nurses and intrusive devices. Even in the last panel, when Laia’s parents and grandparents come to visit her, they are separated by the glass pane of the nursery. The poetic image of the nursery turned into an aquarium expresses the strangeness of this world. The gap between the two hospital spaces is metaphorically represented as an impassable frontier between two worlds: the unknown one under the sea, and the healthy one on the other side of the glass. Like the character, the reader can only look at the scene from the outside. If the description of the hospital is a commonplace in pathographies, then this intimate and fantastic way of representing it enables the reader to come closer to Laia’s parents’ feelings. The confrontation with alterity, with the unknown, which is a particularity of travel narratives, is not restricted to the discovery of a symbolic strange place and can happen through time or space shifts that are part of the journey itself.

Alzheimer’s Time Machine Comics and graphic novels have widely explored time and space travel. In the three works I am studying, they respond to specific needs: in Arrugas for instance, Paco Roca uses the resources of the graphic novel to show how Alzheimer’s disease disrupts the memory. The reader dives into the characters’ memories, as if Alzheimer’s were a real time machine. Those moments from a journey are emphasised by changes in colour and graphic style, a use of ‘creative license’ that ‘facilitates the medical imaginary through the objects chosen to appear in the panels and directs our attention to imagining potential opportunities for change’. 25 As Emilio’s illness progresses, his most recent memories fade away. 25 McMullin, ‘Cancer and the Comics’, 152.

208

Agatha Mohring

The worse the disease gets, the more frequent and unpredictable time travel becomes. At the same time, it begins to seem more material and substantial until the characters’ perception of r­ eality becomes distorted. For instance, Emilio, believing he is forty years younger, fails to recognise his son and believes him to be a customer of the bank for which he used to work. Another night, Emilio gets up at three o’clock in the morning in the retirement home to shave his beard, thinking he has to go to work, and gazes at his rejuvenated reflection in the mirror. In this sense, these journeys to the past correspond to the aim of time travel: they are ‘an escape into an idealized past in a desperate attempt to alter the present and the future. They reflect a growing dis­satisfaction with a present that is sensed as dehumanized, diseased, out of control, and perhaps doomed’.26 The retirement home perfectly symbolises the unbearable dehumanisation that the residents try to escape. By representing Alzheimer’s disease as a journey back to the past, Arrugas dissolves time and shatters spatial continuity by using super­impositions of the places where residents project themselves. Paradoxically, in the pathography relating a real journey, that of Miguel and María Gallardo in the Canary Islands, the feeling of strangeness comes not from the discovery of an exotic and unknown place but rather from the familiar and everyday world.

María and Miguel’s No ‘Tour Travel’ to the Canary Islands There is a major difference between travelling that is understood as a ‘tour’ and María and Miguel’s journey, which is a hybrid of travel diary and graphic medicine. ‘Tour’ travel, which features, for example, in Tintin’s adventures or those of Spirou and Fantasio, can be defined as an episode that begins at a starting point and ends by coming back to it. But the most important condition is that ‘les aventures qu’il comprend n’affectent jamais réellement des personnages qui se trouvent, à chaque retour, lavés de leur voyage et restaurés dans leur condition et leur lieu de départ, prêts pour une nouvelle aventure’ [such adventures never really affect the characters, who are cleansed of their trip every time they come back and restored to their former condition and starting place, ready for another adventure].27 This conception of a journey without any con 26 Andrew Gordon, ‘“Back to the Future”: Oedipus as Time Traveller’, Science Fiction Studies 14, no. 3 (1987): 372–385 (373). 27 Laurent Gerbier, ‘La conquête de l’espace (touristes, héros volants et globe­ trotters)’ [The conquest of space (tourists, flying heroes and globetrotters)], Neuvième­art 2.0 (2012), http://neuviemeart.citebd.org/spip.php?article438.



Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Graphic Novels 209

sequence for the characters is totally opposed to the narrative developed in María y yo. Indeed, even though father and daughter are used to travelling each summer to the same place, they always come back as different people. They know themselves better and understand the rest of the world less. Through this change of perspective, the graphic travel diary adds value to María’s neuro­diversity rather than viewing it as a deficit. By displacing the emotional focus to his daughter, and by trying to reproduce her vision of the world, Miguel Gallardo writes and draws a pathography that puts María in the ‘very center of that experience’. Readers also embark on a journey, which makes them reconsider their understanding of the world. Cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s and autism thus lead to spatial, temporal and ontological journeys, imaginary or real, which are essential to the construction of the characters. María y yo, Una posibilidad entre mil and Arrugas use the resources of graphic medicine to highlight the feeling of strangeness. In so doing, they interrogate our relationship with difference and make us reconsider our perception of the world. To that extent, these pathographies can be considered emotional and medical ‘guidebooks’.28

Graphic Novel Medicine as a Guidebook Following Hawkins’s classification, these three works are ‘didactic pathographies’, as ‘they blend practical information with a personal account of the experience of illness and treatment’. This didactic dimension includes the deconstruction of medical discourses.

Pathography versus Medical Records Hawkins insists that: autobiography about illness can be seen as complementing a patient’s medical record. Both kinds of writing concern the sickness and treatment of a specific individual, but the contrasting points of view – the patient’s versus the medical staff’s – make an enormous difference.29

The creation of graphic novels as pathographies testifies to a desire to offer a sensitive and accessible approach towards authors’ personal experience, which is often lacking in medical records and discourses. Without simplifying the scientific and psychological complexity of the cases, graphic novels deploy a distinctive 28 Hunsaker Hawkins, ‘Pathography’, 127 (this and the previous quotation). 29 Ibid., 128 (this and the previous quotation).

210

Agatha Mohring

l­ anguage to explain A ­ lzheimer’s disease, autism and cerebral palsy. They frequently exploit their interconnected graphical and textual possibilities to go beyond the limitations of medical discourse. A paradigmatic example is the layout of María y yo in the sequence headed ‘Tiempos Muertos’ (Illustration 10.2), in which Miguel Gallardo explains what stereotypies (the actions characteristic of certain neurological conditions) are. The author attaches a textual explanation to a visual description and thereby educates his readers. He does not begin directly with a definition of stereotypy; he prefers to analyse how it looks and when and why it occurs, for instance: ‘A veces María se aburre [. . .]. María no lee un cuento, raras veces ve la televisión y hay pocas cosas que atraigan su atención, en esos momentos María se encierra’ [Sometimes María gets bored (. . .). María doesn’t read stories, hardly ever watches tele­v ision and there are not many things that catch her attention; in those moments, María shuts herself off].30 In this way, he points out the logic underlying her gestures, thereby convincing readers that María is not as strange or erratic as they might think. The red asterisk next to the definition of the stereotypies strengthens the pedagogical dimension of the layout. Miguel Gallardo does not need to simplify the technical definition, because he has already described it, and he is now going to illustrate it. The drawing adopts the same educational objective. By dividing the actions and adding information beneath them, the author creates a hybrid form that has the structure of both graphic novel and diagram, increasing its instructional potential. In the same way, he eschews typical panels or speech balloons, and opts for a schematic drawing style and a diagrammatic use of colours. Through the use of red, he points out the most important features of stereotypic movements, and the red cross locates the body parts that are affected. But he also makes use of specific comics features like onomatopoeia and emanata that reinforce the precision of the description of the actions. Thus, by blending diagram and graphic novel, María y yo is constructed as an efficient guidebook that combines medical information and personal experience, helping the reader to recognise and understand some of the signs of neurodiversity. Not all graphic medicine comics are supportive of medical discourse and records, preferring instead to underline their failures31 and to denounce ‘the limitations of health care professionals’.32 In 30 Gallardo and Gallardo, María y yo. 31 Sarah Glazer, ‘Graphic Medicine: Comics Turn a Critical Eye on Health Care’, Hastings Center Report 45, no. 3 (2015): 15–17 (17). 32 Cole, ‘Comic Relief’, 879.



Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Graphic Novels 211

Illustration 10.2. ‘De Barcelona a Canarias’, Miguel Gallardo, María y yo (© Astiberri Ediciones, 2010).

212

Agatha Mohring

this sense, pathography and medical records can ‘differ in subject and in composition’, and some examples of graphic medicine can come close to ‘angry pathographies’.33 Una posibilidad entre mil reveals, through metaphor and graphic techniques, how de­ humanised medical discourses and the professional attitude of some doctors can affect patients and family (Illustration 10.3). On the one hand, doctors are replaced by white empty coats expressing themselves with terse sentences mostly composed of barely understandable medical acronyms: ‘El APGAR fue correcto’ [The APGAR was OK], ‘El TAC ha salido bien’ [The CT scan came out well].34 Con­frontations with medical discourse and records, scientific and abstract, are associated with the recurrent pattern of a black stain that symbolises the despair and anxiety of Laia’s parents. The more medical ­records are made, the more the black mark grows in density and shape, rendering explicit both Laia’s medical condition and her parents’ feelings. Co­herent speech is replaced by sense impressions, which create an ‘empathic bond’ between the reader and the characters.35 However, departing from the usual relationship between doctors and patients, Mariano the psychologist, who warns Laia’s parents of the necessity of rehabilitation, uses metaphors and a sensory approach. Unlike the usual black patterns and tentacles accompanying medical discourse, white smoke curls and milk and sugar that dilute dark coffee are associated with this character, as if he were enabling a white stain to obliterate the black mark. The black stain is a graphic resource that expresses Cristina and Miguel’s feelings and underlines the opposing effects of empathic or dehumanised health care. Pathographies, built in parallel or in opposition to medical discourse and records, seek a deep and intimate connection with the reader they hope to guide along a personal and universal path.36

Graphic Medicine Guidebooks on Cerebral Palsy, Alzheimer’s and Autism María y yo, Una posibilidad entre mil and Arrugas are intended to orient and support patients and their relatives through the ‘desire to represent what the authors have experienced so that others will know that they are part of something that has touched many lives’.37 33 Hunsaker Hawkins, ‘Pathography’, 128. 34 Durán and Giner Bou, Una posibilidad entre mil, 10. 35 Czerwiec and Huang, ‘Hospice Comics’, 97. 36 McMullin, ‘Cancer and the Comics’, 154. 37 Ibid.



Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Graphic Novels 213

Illustration 10.3. Cristina Durán and Miguel Ángel Giner Bou, Una posibilidad. Edición Integral (© Astiberri Ediciones, 2017).

214

Agatha Mohring

At the same time, these books play a role of ‘divulgation and education’ that is peculiar to graphic medicine,38 since they sensitise the public to a reality of which they are ignorant, and fight prejudices. Finally, they are particularly useful for doctors, whether medical students or qualified practitioners,39 because they ‘allow medical professionals to see from the patient and family perspective what a large and lasting impact [. . .] their interpersonal interactions can have on patients and caregivers’.40 Arrugas, a metaphorical journey in the retirement home, by its sensitive portrayal of deterioration in old age, rehumanises sick and senile elderly people, reintroducing positive feelings, m ­ oments of joy and human warmth. Roca also expresses the feelings of relatives and conveys their suffering when they face the parents’ decline. The author highlights the generational and familial gap, unbridgeable because of mutual ignorance of each other’s perceptions, that leads Miguel to assume the role of Emilio’s family. The authors of Una posibilidad entre mil share their experience of cerebral palsy and of Vojta methods. Their particularly educative testimony gives the reader keys to understand this unknown reality and deal with it in depth. In the postface interview, the authors allude to their readers’ reactions. Health professionals consider Una posibilidad entre mil a guide to comprehending relatives’ viewpoints: ‘Como profesional sanitario, ahora he podido ver el otro lado, el punto de vista de la familia ante una situación así’ [As a health professional, I have now been able to see the other side, the family’s point of view in such a situation]. People whose relatives suffer from cerebral palsy use this book to show their friends and family what they are facing, as one of their readers explains: ‘Cuando quiero explicar a mi familia cómo me siento les he regalado vuestro libro y me he evitado explicaciones’ [When I wanted to explain to my family how I felt, I gave them your book and I saved explanations].41 María y yo is also intended as a guidebook. Miguel Gallardo emphasises the generalised ignorance of autism, and the pain caused by people who stare, overreact and make inappropriate comments, judging María without trying to understand her. His very personal book raises awareness among readers and combats hasty c­ onclusions based on a lack of knowledge, as the psychiatrist 38 José Elías García Sánchez and Enrique García Sánchez, ‘Medicina, cine y cómic’ [Medi­cine, cinema and comics], Revista de Medicina y Cine, 9, no. 1 (2013): 1–2 (1). 39 Glazer, ‘Graphic Medicine’, 17. 40 Czerwiec and Huang, ‘Hospice Comics’, 111. 41 Quoted in Durán and Giner Bou, Una posibilidad entre mil, 132.



Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Graphic Novels 215

Illustration 10.4. ‘Tiempos muertos’, Miguel Gallardo, María y yo (© Astiberri Ediciones, 2009).

216

Agatha Mohring

Amaia Hervas explains in the epilogue. Furthermore, the pictograms on the final plate (Illustration 10.4) make it clear that the graphic novel is drawn with the style and colour codes that Miguel Gallardo used to communicate with María. The graphic novel becomes a guidebook that shows the reader how it may be possible to interact with other people who are neurodiverse. These three graphic pathographies constitute guides for every kind of reader, at different levels, but we should not neglect the therapeutic journey that they represent for their authors.

Pathography as a Therapeutic and Empathic Journey The journey to the past, undertaken by the authors in the course of their testimony, enables them to relive their confrontation, and that of their relatives, with Alzheimer’s, cerebral palsy and autism. The gradual insertion of a more intimate perspective into their account of the trajectory of the medical condition is a precondition for the ‘healing of narrative [. . .], a central idea of Narrative Medicine’ to occur.42 As if they were ‘wounded healers’ and ‘wounded story­ tellers’,43 they also carry the reader through the therapeutic process.

Starting from Intimacy and Ontology The authors of these comics pathographies have all chosen a sensitive and subjective approach, since subjectivity is able to connect them to the reader. Sharing their personal experience of ­A lzheimer’s disease, autism or cerebral palsy as it has affected their family is the starting point of their creation.44 The drawing style emphasises the personal dimension of their approach. Since Miguel Gallardo’s drawings (Illustrations 2 and 4) correspond to those he uses to communicate with María, their style not only is specific to him and appropriate for his proj­ect but also reinforces the sensación de espontaneidad [feeling of spontaneity].45 It creates an impression of quick, imperfect and therefore more 42 Williams, ‘Autography as Auto-therapy’, 359. 43 Arthur W. Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). 44 In writing Arrugas, Roca drew upon his own parents’ experience of old age, upon stories his friends told him about their parents and upon the data he collected after observing living conditions of elderly people in various retirement homes for six months. See Roca and Gallardo, Emotional World Tour. 45 Susana Arroyo Redondo, ‘Formas híbridas de narrativa: Reflexiones sobre el cómic autobiográfico’ [Hybrid forms of narrative: Reflections on the autobiographical comic], Escritura e Imagen 8 (2012): 103–124 (115).



Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Graphic Novels 217

authentic sketches that have not been reworked. As they explain in the closing interview, Durán and Giner Bou favour Durán’s graphic line, which is recognisable to their ­readers, family and friends. These personal, subjective and sensitive graphic choices enable the authors to deepen their understanding of their own past and present and, through empathy, enable readers to explore their own interiority.

Empathic Journeys in Other Minds The narrative dimension of the book, because of its ‘unique capacity to connect people’, is an important empathic trigger. In that sense, the characters are fundamental, because they ensure that the reader is ‘caught up’ in the story, which consequently ‘work(s) on people’.46 Through characters, they represent the world as other people see it, reconstructing how Alzheimer’s disease or autism affects perceptions of reality, which are often invisible. Roca finds a way of representing the passage from a non-Alzheimer’s vision of the world to an A ­ lzheimer’s-afflicted one by changing the graphic style. By changing from the full and firm line used throughout the graphic novel to a blurred and dashed-off scrawl, he symbolises Emilio’s mental transformation and suggests the progressive erasure of his memory.47 To convey the feeling of intermittent memory loss, the author covers every well-known face with a veil of anonymity. The features of ­Emilio’s best friend, Miguel, disappear and then come back gradually when lucidity returns. The fact that Miguel’s facial characteristics are gradually restored enables the reader to feel how ephemeral Emilio’s memories are. The use of a fragile and imperfect graphic outline to represent Miguel’s face (corresponding to Emilio’s vision) contrasts with the firm and perfectly delimited lines of Emilio’s face (corresponding to Miguel’s vision). The sketchy line itself evolves, since when Miguel fades again his clear image never comes back. The blurrier the outlines become, the more colours Miguel’s portrait loses and the more the panel structure vanishes. At the end of the page, a poetic absence of panel, characters or speech balloon symbolises an absence, a faded memory that will never return to the character’s conscious awareness. Through this progressive and intermittent alteration in graphic style, Roca succeeds in the difficult task of figuring the 46 Arthur W. Frank, ‘In Defence of Narrative Exceptionalism’, Sociology of Health and Illness 32, no. 4 (2010): 665–667 (666). 47 Paco Roca, Arrugas (Paris: Éditions Delcourt, 2013, 95–96).

218

Agatha Mohring

flickering perception of reality that characterises Alzheimer’s. By superimposing Emilio’s vision onto that of the reader, Roca promotes empathy. The emotional dynamic of empathy not only puts the reader in the characters’ or the authors’ place but also involves the reader in a therapeutic process.

Therapeutic Journeys through Feelings One principle of the pathography is the fact that ‘someone who has suffered illness or trauma and, having gained wisdom in the process then relates their story, so contributing to the healing of other ­sufferers’.48 Thus, the feelings of characters and authors are crucial and often depict, in particular, violent emotions that cause pain or guilt. These representations of ‘scenes of crying, shock, anxiety and anger’ raise the reader’s empathy49 and have a therapeutic dimension by calming down any feelings of pain and guilt they may have. In Una posibilidad entre mil, Durán and Giner Bou highlight their crisis, anger, pain and despair, which are part of their own experiences and reinforce the humanity of their graphic characters. Their periods of weakness increase the empathy of the reader, as the authors draw attention to their limits and unveil their most shameful and deepest feelings. This strengthens the authenticity of the testimony, creating a relation of trust and complicity with the reader and intensifying their emotions. By depicting their despondency and isolation, the authors emphasise that ‘really serious illness is a painful, disorienting, and isolating experience’50 and at the same time connect with the readers in a similar situation, reassuring them that they are not as alone as they feel. Travelling through the emotions of the couple alongside them can be considered as a therapeutic journey for the reader. This journey can be therapeutic for the authors too, since self-­representation, both visual and textual, involves distance, mediation and self-analysis. Indeed, the moi-personnage,51 in the graphic novel, is an ambiguous self-transposition and projection of the author. It distances the author from the intimate experience that they related and from the intensity of their feelings. Since ‘the form of graphic representations of the “self” [. . .] necessarily 48 Williams, ‘Autography as Auto-therapy’, 364. 49 Nayar, ‘Communicable Diseases’, 168. 50 Hunsaker Hawkins, ‘Pathography’, 129. 51 Thierry Groensteen, ‘Ambiguïtés de l’auto-représentation’, Neuvièmeart 2.0 (2013), http://neuviemeart.citebd.org/spip.php?article577.



Therapeutic Journeys in Contemporary Graphic Novels 219

implies a distortion of the representation’,52 the authors can analyse and accept the violence and the pain of what they have lived through. This is what happens to Miguel Gallardo, who expresses his anger, pain and bitterness through his portrayal of the people judging María. He makes an inventory of their cruel expressions, and reprimands them by cataloguing these. By drawing them and admonishing them, he gains some distance in order to analyse his feelings. We might also underline the distancing effect in self-representation induced by the adoption of a non-realist graphic style. It is significant that the three graphic novels prioritise an expressive line, especially for the faces, over a realist one. Miguel Gallardo’s sketchy drawing, Durán and Giner Bou’s squared faces and Roca’s long, distorted and wrinkled features blur the portraits and the events represented. This process of abstraction allows the authors to come back to re-envision in a new way the facts that they relate. Therapeutic drawing enables them to experiment with different feelings, which eases their pain, and to consider the difficulties they face with more serenity.

Conclusion We can conclude that María y yo, Arrugas and Una posibilidad entre mil are all pathographies based on the pattern of a journey to the inside of autism, Alzheimer’s disease and cerebral palsy. These works borrow the form and features of the guidebook, and this inter­medial aspect gives a different perspective to graphic medi­ cine. The metaphor of the journey and the educative apparatus of the guidebook help the reader to grasp the nature, evolution, impact and issues surrounding these complex afflictions. The malleability of structure and drawing style peculiar to the graphic novel enables pathography to explore an intimate perspective and to guide the patients, their family, the authors themselves and even readers unconcerned by this reality. The graphic novel’s capacity for immersion in the inwardness of protagonists and readers offers insights into the special features of autism, cerebral palsy and ­A lz­heimer’s. Furthermore, it offers a philosophical and ethical meditation on life’s journey and on human nature. The ­subjective 52 José Manuel Trabado Cabado, ‘Construcción narrativa e identidad gráfica en el cómic autobiográfico: Retratos del artista como joven dibujante’ [Narrative construction and graphic identity in the autobiographical comic: Portraits of the artist as a young cartoonist], Rilce: Revista de Filología Hispánica 28, no. 1 (2012): 223–256 (230).

220

Agatha Mohring

and personal point of view adopted is a pertinent approach for graphic narratives that can develop a deep reflection about alterity, since it represents ‘espacios mentales paralelos a la realidad pero que también redefinen nuestra propia existencia cotidiana’ [mental spaces parallel to reality but that also redefine our own daily existence].53 The interrogation of the status accorded to difference and neuro­diversity lead readers towards introspection and to the questioning of their prejudices.

Agatha Mohring teaches Spanish and Hispano-American language and culture in the engineering school Polytech Angers. She holds the agrégation and a doctorate in Hispanic and Hispanic American Studies from the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès. She completed her dissertation, ‘Les Dispositifs de l’intime dans le roman graphique espagnol contemporain: Une approche intermédiale’ [Devices for expressing intimacy in the contemporary Spanish graphic novel: An intermedial approach], in 2018. Her research focuses on the graphic novel, the representations of intimacy and on the relationship between graphic novels and comics and their interactions with other media. She also analyzes the representation of the memory of the Spanish civil war and Franco’s dictatorship in the contemporary graphic novel.

53 Ana Merino, ‘Rincones de ensimismamiento en la novela gráfica’ [Corners of self-­absorption in the graphic novel], in Narrativa gráfica, ed. Ana María Peppino Barale (Mexico City: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2012), 227–233 (233).

Chapter 11

Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age Multimodal Extension in the Works of Aleix Saló Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes

The Origins of Aleix Saló’s Humorous Universe In recent years, comics and graphic novels have experienced a boom in the Iberian Peninsula, attaining prominence in the literary landscape and becoming ‘an intergenerational phenomenon transcending its traditional function of providing entertainment primarily for children and young adults, while expanding its reach to readers of all ages’.1 At the same time, comics and graphic novels We are greatly indebted to Aleix Saló for answering our questions and granting us permission to use his work. We are also grateful to Daniel Cassany (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) for his support, to Enrique del Rey Cabero for his valuable comments and to Pawel Adrjan for his helpful suggestions. Javier Muñoz-Basols acknowledges funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation as part of the project entitled ‘Digital Identities and Cultures in Language Education / Identidades y culturas digitales en la educación lingüística’ (EDU2014-57677-C2-1-R). 1 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Micaela Muñoz-Calvo, ‘Human Memory and the Act of Remembering in Contemporary Iberian Graphic Novels’ in The Routledge

222 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes have increasingly relied on current topics from the political and institutional spheres, such as the 2008 economic crisis, as narrative frames.2 Some of these works have even been described as handbooks of economics and economic critiques for the lay audience.3 Aleix Saló, born in 1983, is probably one of the most representative of the cartoonists committed to analysing the effects of socio­political and economic changes on individuals. Since entering the comics scene with his opera prima in Catalan, Fills dels 80: La generació bombolla [Children of the ’80s: The bubble generation],4 he has been giving a voice to the disappointment of those born between 1980 and 1989, whom Saló calls ‘the bubble generation’. This generation inherited the transition to democracy in Spain and grew up in a country that was undergoing rapid economic and social transformation in the 1980s. That decade brought renovation, prosperity and the consolidation of a society that, as Saló himself acknowledges, foretold a promising future for this age group: ‘Yo tenía compañeros y amigos, o incluso yo, que dábamos un poco por sentado que con hacer la carrera ibas a salir, se iban a pelear por ti y te pagaban un sueldazo’ [I had colleagues and friends, and even myself, who took rather for granted that once you finished university, people would be desperate to hire you and you would make a lot of money].5 Reality, however, turned out to be different. When





­ ompanion to Iberian Studies, ed. Javier Muñoz-Basols, Laura Lonsdale and C Manuel Delgado (London: Routledge, 2017), 652–670 (652). 2 E.g. Miguel Brieva, Dinero [Money] (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, 2008), Lo que me está pasando [What is happening to me] (Barcelona: Reservoir Books, 2015); Andrés Rábago ‘El Roto’, Viñetas para una crisis [Vignettes for a crisis] (Barcelona: Reservoir Books, 2011); Paco Roca, ‘Crónica de una crisis anunciada’ [Chronicle of a crisis foretold], El País Semanal (15 April 2012); Carlos Torres and Ona Peña, La máquina de hacer dinero: Quiénes y cómo fabrican las crisis económicas [The money-­making machine: Who manufactures economic crises and how] (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2011); Marcos Prior and Danide, Fago­ citosis [Phagocytosis] (Barcelona: Ediciones Glénat, 2011); Juanjo Sáez, Crisis (de ansiedad) [Crisis (of anxiety)] (Barcelona: Penguin Random House, 2013); Aleix Saló, Españistán: Este país se va a la mierda [Españistán: This country is going to hell] (Barcelona: Editores de Tebeos, 2011); Aleix Saló, Simi­ocracia: Crónica de la gran resaca económica [Simiocracy: Chronicle of the great economic hangover] (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, 2012); Aleix Saló, Euro­pesadilla: Alguien se ha comido a la clase media (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, 2013), trans. Lawrence Schimel as Euronightmare: Someone Devoured the Middle Class (Barcelona: Penguin Random House, 2014). All translations of non-English references and quotations are our own unless otherwise indicated. 3 Juan Royo, Un mundo en viñetas [A world in vignettes] (Zaragoza: 1001 Ediciones, 2012), esp. 54–55. 4 Aleix Saló, Fills dels 80: La generació bombolla (Barcelona: Ediciones Glénat, 2009). 5 Juan Rodríguez Millán, ‘Entrevista con Aleix Saló sobre Hijos de los 80: La genera­ ción burbuja [Spanish translation]’ [Interview with Aleix Saló on Children of the ’80s: The bubble generation], Comic Para Todos (15 September 2014), https://­



Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age 223

the children of the 1980s reached adulthood, they became ‘una generación hija del estado del bienestar que se dio de bruces con la precariedad laboral, la crisis económica y el paro’ [a generation child of the welfare state that was thrown headlong into precarious jobs, the economic crisis and unemployment].6 Witnessing first-hand the socioeconomic reality around him, Saló began to build the basis of his narrative universe in his first work, Fills dels 80 (Hijos de los 80 in the Spanish translation).7 Indeed, who better than a student of architecture to narrate the devastating effects of the Spanish property bubble? Saló portrayed the nostalgia of a generation whose shared dream of prosperity was truncated by the economic downturn. 8 Nonetheless, as the author himself indicates, this first book did not earn him many readers. Learning from this experience, he therefore adopted a different strategy to popularise his second book, Españistan: Este país se va a la mierda (2011). To reach a wider audience, he created a video en­titled ‘Españistán, de la burbuja inmobiliaria a la crisis’ [­Españistán, from the property bubble to the crisis], an animated book trailer uploaded to YouTube on 25 May 2011,9 which the author would later describe as a ‘winning horse’.10 In it, he narrates a well-­ documented, satirical chronicle of the causes and effects of Spain’s property bubble. By combining multimodality with social criticism – and by having a trailer circulate in a digital media economy – Saló was able to rapidly generate interest amongst ­different types of audiences. Hence, this innovative combination enabled Saló to whet viewers’ curiosity with the aim of attracting them to the homonymous comic book. In this way, Saló earned greater prominence in the field of social criticism to become ‘a kind of public intellectual whose opinion matters’.11 The result of his p ­ opularity was that he comicparatodos.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/entrevista-con-aleix-salo-sobre-hijosde-los-80-la-generacion-burbuja. 6 Jesús Jiménez, ‘La generación burbuja se dio de bruces con la crisis económica’, Radio Televisión Española (9 September 2014), http://www.rtve.es/noticias/ 20140909/aleix-salo-generacion-burbuja-se-dio-bruces-crisis-economica/ 1006362.shtml. 7 Aleix Saló, Hijos de los 80: La generación burbuja (Barcelona: Penguin Random House, 2014). 8 Tom C. Avendaño, ‘Mi generación es tan útil como un Ferrari en un camino de cabras’ [My generation is as useful as a Ferrari on a goat trail], El País (16 October 2014), http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/10/16/icon/1413478097_969475.html. 9 Aleix Saló, ‘Españistán, de la burbuja inmobiliaria a la crisis’, YouTube (25 May 2011), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7P2ExRF3GQ. 10 Rodríguez Millán, ‘Entrevista con Aleix Saló’. 11 Jaime Almansa Sánchez, ‘To Be or Not to Be? Public Archaeology as a Tool of Public Opinion and the Dilemma of Intellectuality’, Archaeological Dialogues 20, no. 1 (2013), 5–11 (9).

224 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes was able to reach the Spanish mass media as well as top-level poli­ ticians, including President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who confessed to having seen the video.12 The popularity of Saló’s work is because of not only humour or drawing style, but also the informational and educational content so clearly evident in the meticulous documentation of the chronology of economic and political events, as well as the use of data and economic terminology. Keenly aware of the educational value that humour can confer, Saló made a point of inserting a range of anecdotes chronicling the progressive build-up of the events that created the economic crisis and the latter’s origins in the property bubble (Illustration 11.1). The themes, the language and the simplicity of the lines in Saló’s comics display inf luences from two earlier generations of illustrators.13 The first includes a long list of cartoonists who were active during the final years of Franco’s dictatorship through the transition to a well-consolidated democracy and who were working at several well-known satirical magazines – for example ­Hermano Lobo (1972–1976), El Papus (1973–1976), El Jueves (1977) and ­Interviú (1976–2018) – as well as national newspapers – for ­e xample, Máximo (El País), Peridis (El País), Romeu (El País), Forges (Diario 16 & El País), Chumy Chúmez (ABC), Gallego & Rey (Diario 16 and El País), Antonio Mingote (ABC) and Summers (ABC).14 They were followed by a second generation of cartoonists, which has been active since the 1990s and which comprises artists such as Paco Alcázar, Manel Fontdevila, Albert Monteys and Bernardo Vergara, who work with such magazines as Público, El Jueves and El Víbora and whose comics focus on satire and current affairs. Although these authors helped develop and sustain a strong tradition of graphic literature in Spain, their continued presence made it more difficult for a younger generation of artists to break through. In recent decades, while some have managed to achieve recognition – thanks in part to their enterprising spirit and to the support of small publishing houses – many have struggled to forge 12 María Soledad Hernández Nieto, ‘Aleix Saló: Crónicas de una crisis anunciada’ [Aleix Saló: Chronicles of a crisis foretold], Revista Croma 1, no. 2 (2013), 46–50 (47). 13 Rodríguez Millán, ‘Entrevista con Aleix Saló’. 14 Gerardo Vilches, ‘Las elecciones generales en el humor gráfico de la prensa diaria (1982–1996)’ [The general elections in the graphic humour of the daily press], in Historia de la época socialista: España, 1982–1996 [History of the socialist era: Spain, 1982–1996], ed. Luis Carlos Hernando Noguera, Antonio Martínez, Abdón Mateos López and Álvaro Soto Carmona (Madrid: Asociación de Historiadores del Presente, 2011), 1–21 (4–5).



Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age 225

Illustration 11.1. Saló, Fills dels 80 (14) [We are the bubble generation, children of democracy, of postmodernity, of the crisis of values and the welfare state. / Life is Happy Flower Tutti Color / Raised inside a bubble / And there we were, each one of us, happily dreaming, until we had to wake up on our own precisely when another bubble appeared . . . / Muaaha haaa!! / The property bubble.] Reproduced with the kind permission of Aleix Saló.

226 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes their way into the graphic genre.15 As Saló has described it, ‘Jóvenes como yo, que querían publicar en El Jueves o La Vanguardia, los había a patadas y lo teníamos y lo seguimos teniendo muy complicado para dedicarnos a esto’ [There were loads of young people like me, who wanted to publish in El Jueves or La Vanguardia, and it was – it is – difficult to work in this field].16 This difficulty in gaining access to the traditional inner circles of illustrators was probably one of the driving forces that led Saló to explore other options to make his visual literature known. The promotion of his work using a book trailer was decisive. As we shall argue next, it is also closely linked to the multimodal components that Saló deliberately inserts into his graphic and audiovisual works – a multimodal extension that is at the reader’s disposal.

Multimodal Components in the Works of Aleix Saló Saló’s videos and comics are characterised by a high degree of inter­ textuality and by multimodality, that is ‘the use of several semi­otic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event, together with the particular way in which these modes are combined’.17 This has to do with the way in which the cartoonist designs an array of different semiotic methods to produce humour. The system of signs becomes interpret­able because of the design of a specific perception process, which is deliberately used by Saló to configure his narratives.18 Alice Leber-Cook and Roy Cook point out the following: Comics, with their unique and powerful combination of picture and word, are multimodal text par excellence. As a result, comics are, on this new understanding of literacy and text, not only genuine texts – experience of which constitutes genuine reading – but are also particularly interesting and important examples of this wider understanding of text.19

15 Gerardo Vilches, ‘Entrevista con Aleix Saló’, Entrecomics (22 September 2014). 16 Jiménez, ‘La generación burbuja’. 17 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, Multimodal Discourse: The Modes of Media of Contemporary Communication (London: Arnold, 2001), 20. 18 Charles J. Forceville, ‘Non-verbal and Multimodal Metaphor in a Cognitivist Framework: Agendas for Research’, in Applications of Cognitive Linguistics: Multi­ modal Metaphor, ed. Charles J. Forceville and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009), 19–42 (22). 19 Alice Leber-Cook and Roy T. Cook, ‘Stigmatization, Multimodality and Metaphor: Comics in the Adult English as a Second Language Classroom’, in Graphic Novels and Comics in the Classroom: Essays on the Educational Power of Sequential Art, ed. Carrye Kay Syma and Robert G. Weiner (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013), 23–34 (28).



Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age 227

Consequently, some examples of the use of multimodality in Saló’s works are the lines and the shapes of the drawings, the different fonts and the use of colour (or its absence), but they also include a careful and evocative use of language, with phonological features originating from orality, which include changes in and the mixing of codes (i.e. words and expressions in English or the imitation of other languages), music and other sound effects, and cultural references to television, cinema or literature.

Pictorial and Typographic Components From the point of view of the drawings, Saló configures his characters with simple, thick lines and shapes. His characters are generally schematic and, occasionally, have minimum facial traits (no nose or mouth and often no hair), and the scenes take place in open landscapes without a background. Saló claims to have been influenced by artists like Xavier Mariscal and Keith Haring.20 The fonts also play a part in Saló’s multimodal universe, since he plays with the shape, size and colour of the letters that he draws, highlighting some keywords in order to evoke a diversity of connotations and meanings while simultaneously contributing to the humour of the scene. In spoken language, the semantic value of many of these words would be enhanced with the tone of voice and the intensity with which they are uttered. We can see this, for example, in the Españistán book trailer, in which Saló himself inserts the voice-over, or in Simiocracia21 through the utterances articulated by a group of speakers. For instance, there are the words ‘¡Tú sí que vales!’ [You are really worth it!], which were inspired by a homonymous TV show, that a multitude of voters shouted to the head of the Spanish government, Mariano Rajoy, after he won the general election in 2011.22 In his first book, Fills dels 80, the cartoonist even fuses letters and drawings, for example, in the title ‘Habitatge’ [Housing], where the capital letter A takes the form of a house. The use of different fonts to create meaning beyond what the words express is a constant in the evolution of the ­author’s works. They are combined with the traditional practices 20 Tesa Zalez, ‘Españistán y Aleix Saló en Spanish Way.es’, Spanish Way (22 July 2011), YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZiSm-CZLfM. 21 Saló, Simiocracia, 44–45. 22 Sonsoles Mayorga, ‘Cientos de personas celebran en Génova la victoria del PP al grito de “Tú sí que vales”’ [Hundreds of people celebrate the victory of the PP in Génova Street to the cry of ‘You are really worth it’], Radio Televisión Española (21 ­November 2011), http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20111121/cientos-personascelebran-genova-­v istoria-del-pp-grito-mariano-tu-si-vales/476903.shtml.

228 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes of comics, such as the use of larger letters to indicate that a character is shouting. In the same vein, the rare use of colour responds to the willingness to facilitate the reading experience and to make it more attractive and pleasant with an undiminished attention to the message. In Fills dels 80 and Españistán, Saló uses basic, compact colours – blue, green, yellow and orange – with no chromatic scale. On the other hand, in his more recent books, Simiocracia and Europesadilla, he does not use any colour. One can detect a clear evolution concerning the graphic aspects of his works: the loss of colour inside the book coincides with the increasing predominance of the text in conventional typed words, which take up more space as more data are provided and the social and political critique sharpens. Thus, while in Fills dels 80 and Españistán the drawings carried the burden of the narrative thread (Illustration 11.2), in Simiocracia and Europesadilla the narrative is sustained mainly by the printed text, with black-and-white drawings visually re­ inforcing, illustrating and occasionally completing what is being told (Illustration 11.3). Saló begins drawing satirical vignettes in Fills dels 80 and follows with the graphic novel Españistán to arrive finally at the ‘illustrated essays’ of Simiocracia and Europesadilla.23 Such an evolution seems to indicate that the cartoonist wants to confer progressively more importance upon the message, while the way in which that message is transmitted serves to emphasise its content. That is, Saló evolves from creating short stories with a satirical tone to writing informative books with a social critical discourse, with vignettes that illustrate what is being explained and that help to interpret it. Significantly, Saló asserts that he considers himself more of a cartoonist than just an illustrator, and he acknowledges the influence of cartoonists such as Jaume Perich and Andrés Rábago ‘El Roto’ on his work. According to Saló, the cartoonist ‘utiliza el dibujo más como una herramienta que como un fin, una herramienta para explicar cosas, en este caso la actualidad’ [uses drawings as a tool more than an end, a tool to tell things, in this case, current affairs].24 Thus, a possible explanation of the author’s aesthetic choices is that he understands art as a means of reaching a wide audience with his critical message by using a plain and simple style that is capable of transmitting a complex message (e.g. about economics or finance) and thus making this message accessible to everyone. 23 Vilches, ‘Entrevista con Aleix Saló’. 24 Zalez, ‘Españistán y Aleix Saló’.



Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age 229

Illustration 11.2. Saló, Fills dels 80 (68) [Labour market conditions have not always been the same. Our grandparents: they could not study and they worked their whole life as ‘X’ / Our parents: they studied ‘X’ and they worked their whole life as ‘X’ / Us: we studied ‘X’ and during the last year we have worked as ‘Y’, as ‘Z’, as ‘W’, as ‘H’, as ‘F’ . . . / Is anyone from the bubble generation working in the field they studied? / My father told me to get a degree if I wanted to be someone. Now I am a graduate in languages, and I work as a waitress. / And I serve beer to my neighbour, who left school and now, as a construction worker, makes three times what I do. / Some clams, darling.] Reproduced with the kind permission of Aleix Saló.

230 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes

Illustration 11.3. Saló, Simiocracia (114) [You in 2009. / The biggest pessimists say that this crisis may last until 2011 . . .! / You in 2012. / Until 2011, he says? Ha, ha, ha! / Even so, the president kept invoking the old ‘collective truth’ of optimism, thinking that it would be enough to keep us afloat. / I am starting to see green shoots! / Above all, don’t stop consuming and buying houses!] Reproduced with the kind permission of Aleix Saló.



Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age 231

Aural and Cultural References In terms of creating meaning, Saló’s work contains multimodal features related to orality. Saló uses these features as a strategy to get close to the readers and make them identify with how the message is being communicated. Examples of this orality are numerous: onomato­poeias such as ‘txunda, txunda’ to imitate techno music (Fills dels 80, 48) and others inspired by classic superhero comics such as ‘¡Pum! ¡Paf! ¡Faapáh!’ in Españistán (71), rude expressions such as ‘cagontó’ [I shit on everything] and ‘quién tiene la puta culpa’ [whose fricking fault is it?] in Simiocracia (13, 67), or words from young people’s jargon such as ‘¡Chao pescao!’ [Bye fish] and ‘¡Soy lo puto más!’ [I am the fricking shit] in E ­ uropesadilla (105, 134). Often these expressions have been popularised by TV shows, prominent examples being ‘neng’ [mate] and ‘tontolaba’ [doofus] in Españistán (16, 70) and ‘¡Qué fuerte! ¡Qué fuerte!’ [Unbelievable! Unbelievable!] in Simocracia (49). Saló also uses invented proper names with phonetic games that create a humorous effect (e.g. ‘Ariqui Town’ in Españistán (13) and ‘Bank of Ziripollen’ in ­Simiocracia (5)). Another common occurrence is the mixing of linguistic codes in colloquial expressions such as ‘We are la polla in vinegar’ in ­Simiocracia (1), which is a variation of the exclamatory expression ‘Somos la polla en vinagre’ [We are the shit], which can be used in a positive or negative way. Still regarding phonetic games, we can find stereotyped reproductions of Chinese speakers’ speech when they speak Spanish, which mainly consist of pronouncing the ‘r’ sound as an ‘l’ and using all verbs in the infinitive – ‘No pleocupal. Gandolfo sel buen homble. Él muy jodido pol pensión de mielda (. . .). Nosotlos adoptal·lo pol pena’ [Don’t wolly. Gandolfo good man. He messed up because of his clappy pension. We adopted him out of pity] in Españistán (22) – and, in parallel, those from Spanish speakers when they speak English, which are mainly based on a transcribed imitation of the pronunciation of consonants and vowels. One example is ‘Hello’ – ‘­Jeeeeloooou (. . .) Aim de president of Espaaain’ [I am the president of Spain] – in ­Simiocracia (94). There are also imitations of French articulation, such as ‘Je suí totalement cubiegt du miegd’ [Je suis totalement recouvert de merde (I am totally covered in shit)] in Europesadilla (160). In this way, Saló displays a set of resources that create humour on the basis of phonetic and semantic associations, humour that is directed towards both the comic reader and the video watcher.

232 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes With regard to the intertextuality with cultural icons, allusions to tele­v ision, cinema, pop music, literature, art and philosophy are frequent: amongst others, we can find references to the Telecinco TV channel dating show Hombres, mujeres y viceversa [Men, women and vice versa] (17, 26), the film Gone with the Wind (27) and the pop star Alejandro Sanz (64, 65, 66, 69, 70, 71, 72) in Españistán; references to George Orwell’s 1984 and Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People in Simiocracia (36, 37, 100, 40); and references to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave both in Españistán (59) and in Simi­ ocracia (14, 15). Other strategies adopted by Saló in his last two works, Simi­ ocracia and Europesadilla, to get closer to the reader include the use of the first person singular and self-portraying and introducing himself as a character to explain his personal experiences as a way of illustrating his message (Simiocracia, 22, 53, 80, 112). It is with this set of visual and discursive strategies that Saló constructs his pictorial and narrative universe, strategies that are based on a multimodal approach whose objective is to convey a socially critical message. As the author himself claims, he analyses current affairs in a way that makes them appear ‘more human’ than the chronicles in other recognised sources.25

Semiotic Modes as a Narrative Frame for Social Criticism The titles of Saló’s videos and comics are evidence of the author’s careful use of language. ‘Ratzinger Z’,26 a two-minute video that he created for the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Barcelona in November 2010, is a good example. By means of paronomasia (i.e. the use of words that sound similar to create a specific effect), this cartoonist establishes a phonological parallelism between the Pope’s last name – Ratzinger – and the manga cartoon series from the 1970s, Mazinger Z. Saló thus succeeds in building a humorous narrative that transforms Pope B ­ enedict XVI into a superhero combatting everything that threatens Catholic dogmas, such as abortion and homosexuality. Saló also reinforces the ideas that the images transmit with background music from the 1960s American series Batman.

25 Iker Zarallo Peretó, ‘Entrevista a Aleix Saló’, La Finestra Digital (25 April 2013), YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BF-AD-f1CI. 26 Aleix Saló, ‘Ratzinger Z (el Papa a Barcelona)’, YouTube (4 November 2010), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmt1rnJ_a40.



Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age 233

Something similar happens with the word Españistán, where semi­otic traces combine to create new meanings. The morphological crossing between the noun ‘España’ [Spain] and the suffix ‘-stán’ is easily identifiable with former Soviet republics in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbeki­ stan) or with countries like Pakistan or Afghanistan, which frequently appear in the media as political conflict areas. Indeed, the humorous new word Españistán in the title might make audiences curious about what this ‘new country’ would be like. In the introduction to Simiocracia, Saló explains that this title is an adaptation of the word Hispanistán, which appeared in Burbuja.info, an inter­net forum that started to warn people about the effects of the property bubble well before the mass media began to speak about it openly. Yet another reference that explains how Saló came up with the name Españistán may have been the 10 December 2001 cover of The New Yorker with the comical name ‘New Yorkistan’.27 This type of humour, in which the author plays with the evocative meanings of selected words, together with the different semantic associations their sounds suggest, constitutes one of the more remarkable multimodal components of Saló’s work. Moreover, in the book trailer Españistán, the multimodal aspect is reinforced by the use of music and sound effects. For example, at the end of the video, a skinny cow appears to the sound of Middle Eastern background music, thereby reaffirming the humour evoked by the drawings through the effect of ‘anchoring’ the viewer-listener in this imaginary Españistán, where poverty and political chaos are the norm (Illustration 11.4). The nomenclature selected for the titles of Saló’s works also demonstrates his use of word games to evoke a kind of cultural hybridisation between two worlds. Giving his figures an exotic charge, the author both moves us to this new place and invites us to explore it, much like the Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle does.28 Significantly, he uses the same strategy as in his other books: condensing the main idea in the title by using a single compound word to summarise each book’s topos and then following it up with an explanatory subtitle. In his third book, Simiocracia: Crónica de la gran resaca eco­ nómica, in which he deals with the same sociopolitical theme, 27 See Javier Muñoz-Basols, Pawel Adrjan and Marianne David, ‘Phonological Humour as Perception and Representation of Foreignness’, in Irony and Humour: From Pragmatics to Discourse, ed. Leonor Ruiz Gurillo and Belén Alvarado Ortega (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013), 159–188 (161). 28 Santiago García, La novela gráfica [The graphic novel] (Bilbao: Astiberri, 2010), 254.

234 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes

Illustration 11.4. Frame fragments from the book trailer Españistán (6:25– 6:28). Reproduced with the kind permission of Aleix Saló.

the author offers an ‘illustrated handbook’ of the origins of the crisis, which includes historical analogies and autobiographical elements, 29 so much so that Saló – who is well aware of the edu­ cational value of his comics – offers at the end of Simiocracia a list of recommended media sources concerning the political and economic issues involved for readers interested in familiarising themselves with the relevant economic concepts.30 These recommendations of specialised sources encourage readers to go beyond their own reading of the comic and thus develop a critical spirit nourished by the data offered them therein. It is in his fourth book that, as an author committed to the reality that surrounds him, Saló jumps into the European context by internationalising his socially critical discourse. In 2013, in Euro­ pesadilla: Alguien se ha comido a la clase media [Euronightmare: 29 Hernández Nieto, ‘Aleix Saló’, 47. 30 Saló, Simiocracia, ‘Introducción’.



Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age 235

Someone devoured the middle class], he puts the international crisis into the institutional sphere, questioning the actions taken by the European Union and portraying the instability of European values. Shifting from his first book in Catalan, in which he portrays the difficulties faced by his generation, to his second book, in which he denounces the Spanish sociopolitical reality, Saló now goes a step further in the evolution of his work by internationalising his literature: ‘Necesito informarme mucho, leer, formarme e informarme (. . .) me gustaría viajar a Bruselas. El ambiente del Parlamento Europeo me parece que es un gran objeto a descubrir por parte del gran público, me da la sensación de que faltan voces que expliquen Europa desde la cultura popular’ [I need to do a lot of research, read, educate myself and get informed (. . .) I would like to travel to Brussels. It seems to me that the atmosphere of the European Parliament is a big topic for the general public to discover. My feeling is that there is a lack of voices explaining Europe from the point of view of popular culture].31 Starting with the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, the economy became part of pop culture. Economic terminology (e.g. toxic assets, vulture funds and risk premium) has progressively been included in the lexical repertoire of the non-specialised audience32 – again, thanks to the role of mass media. In this context, Saló declares: ‘Ante la extrema complejidad de la actual coyuntura económica, cuyas enrevesadas reglas suelen ser la coartada perfecta para ocultar todo tipo de abusos y corruptelas, creo que cualquier tentativa de divulgación es poca, aunque venga de la mano de la sátira’ [Given the extreme complexity of the current economic situation, whose difficult rules frequently create the perfect excuse to hide all kinds of abuses and corruption, I believe that any attempt at dissemination is worthwhile, even if it comes in the form of satire].33 Phenomena like the book Le Capital au XXIe siècle by the French economist Thomas Piketty,34 which, despite being relatively technical, attained a remarkable popularity once translated into English as C ­ apital in the Twenty-First Century, confirm the increased interest in the economy by a significant group of the population. At the same time, the key role that a work’s translation can play in its 31 Rodríguez Millán, ‘Entrevista con Aleix Saló’. 32 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Danica Salazar, ‘Cross-Linguistic Lexical Influence between English and Spanish’, Spanish in Context 13, no. 1 (2016), 80–102 (89). 33 Saló, Simiocracia, ‘Introducción’. 34 Thomas Piketty, Le Capital au XXIe siècle (Paris: Seuil, 2013), trans. Arthur Goldhammer as Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

236 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes dissemination at the international level can also be said to apply to the graphic genres.35 Choosing topics that concern the general public and including common sociocultural references are the principal tools that Saló uses to bring his work to an international audience by way of translation. His latest output of graphic literature has been translated into different languages, thereby internationalising his message. As part of his works’ multimodal extension, Saló uses different strategies for his books and for his videos. Notably, in the book trailers ‘Españistán’, ‘Simiocracia’36 and ‘Europesadilla’,37 a voice-over narrates the events. On the other hand, in the video ‘Ratzinger Z’ and the book trailer ‘Euronightmare’,38 the narrative sequence and the changes of scene are set by images and sound effects along with intertitles and overprint information – in Catalan in the case of ‘Ratzinger Z’ and in English in that of ‘Euro­nightmare’. All of these multimodal elements are sufficient for the narrative and humorous sequence. In ‘Euronightmare’, Saló divides the world into different kinds of collective regional perceptions: what Americans think about Europe and vice versa, as well as what Western Europeans think about Eastern Europe and vice versa. The same holds for Northern and Southern Europe and for the United Kingdom and continental Europe. In so doing, Saló creates humour by evoking stereotypes about different cultures and using a representational strategy that can also be found in other textual genres.39 For example, the vision of the United States by Europeans is that of an obese man sitting in a motorised wheelchair, who crosses the screen as he shoots a submachine gun. In contrast, the vision of Europe by US citizens is condensed into a scene set on a terrace in Paris, with the silhouettes of other European capitals in the background, where a waiter brings the customers a bill in which the tax is ten times the gross price. The absence of a voice-over allows these videos to cross 35 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Enrique del Rey Cabero, ‘Translation of Hispanic Comics and Graphic Novels’, in The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Transla­ tion Studies, ed. Roberto Valdeón and África Vidal (London: Routledge, 2019), 365–384. 36 Aleix Saló, ‘Simiocracia’, YouTube (9 April 2012), https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=TfRSfF296js. 37 Aleix Saló, ‘Europesadilla’, YouTube (3 April 2013), https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=BF0bGaQCn04. 38 Aleix Saló, ‘What the UNITED STATES Thinks of EUROPE [Euronightmare]’, YouTube (22 October 2014), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDqayC1sR7g &t=26s. 39 Carolene Ayaka and Ian Hague, ‘Introduction’, in Representing Multiculturalism in Comics and Graphic Novels, ed. Carolene Ayaka and Ian Hague (New York: Routledge, 2015), 1–16 (2).



Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age 237

linguistic and political borders. This absence of a voice is compensated for by common cultural references: from the monuments of the urban landscape of different cities that have become European symbols, such as the silhouettes of the Eiffel Tower, Saint Peter’s Basilica, Big Ben, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the trailer of the book Euronightmare, to well-known international characters like the Pope in ‘Ratzinger Z’ or Conchita Wurst in Euronightmare, the latter being the bearded female singer who won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014. It is in this way that the narrative thread is sustained by images, music and sounds, which, together with the receiver’s encyclo­paedic knowledge, produce meaning. In his latest book trailer, Saló even went a step further by parodying the United Kingdom as a state going repeatedly through a door marked ‘Exit’, thereby anticipating the outcome of the Brexit referendum that would take place two years later in 2016 (Illustration 11.5). Saló’s discourse and humour have become increasingly global, given how his humour is always created on the basis of concrete cultural references. In the current European and international context, these shared references are becoming common, something which in turn allows readers to readily interpret their unequivocal message. The use of fictional templates allows Saló to find a wider

Illustration 11.5. The United Kingdom ‘exiting’ the European Union. Frame fragments from the book trailer ‘Euronightmare’ (2014) (1:26–1:36). Reproduced with the kind permission of Aleix Saló.

238 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes audience outside Spain and meaningfully shape his narrative of social criticism in a wider European context. As we will see next, the use of The Lord of the Rings, a well-known fictional template, as a narrative framework for the story in Españistán fulfils the objective of presenting the reader with a familiar plot with which s/he can easily identify.

From the Book Trailer to the Comic Book and Back: The Multimodal Extension Saló argues that the YouTube video was a decisive factor in his reaching a substantial number of readers, thus making it possible to further his career as a cartoonist. According to Kati Voigt: In a globalized world which is more and more ruled by mass media and technology, it is increasingly difficult for writers and pub­lishers to promote their books. The solution is almost ironic: popular media, which is assumed to decrease readership, is turned into a tool to increase the number of readers.40

Even though ease of access to information and the low cost and the speed of distributing electronic media have progressively helped the latter replace books in their traditional format,41 the book trailer is a clear example of how technology can be used to draw readers to the printed book.42 In fact, David Barnett puts it this way: [Across the United States and beyond] both print and digital sales are growing. Print comics more than match the rise in digital sales (. . .). While almost all forms of print media are down, comics are up, graphic novels are up, and digital comics sales are up. We are seeing that one feeds the other, people get hooked on digital, and end up going to stores to buy physical copies, or the reverse.43

After his opera prima, Saló began using the book trailer as a multimodal extension of the multimodal universe of his books. With the book trailer, the author endeavours to give life to his characters in a kind of ‘visual entrée’ to what the reader will discover in the paper book. Thus, in his most popular comic, Españistán: Este país se va a la mierda, he narrates the history of the unemployed 40 Kati Voigt, ‘Becoming Trivial: The Book Trailer’, Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research 5, no. 1 (2013), 671–689 (671). 41 Albert N. Greco, Jim Milliot and Robert M. Wharton, The Book Publishing Indus­ try (New York: Routledge, 2013), 57–58. 42 Jeremy Hyler and Troy Hicks, Create, Compose, Connect! Reading, Writing, and Learning with Digital Tools (New York: Routledge, 2014), 74–76. 43 David Barnett, ‘Comics Capture Digital Readers – and Grab More Print Fans’, ­G uardian (3 July 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/03/ comics-capture-digital-readers-and-grab-more-print-fans.



Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age 239

youngster Fredo, whose name is inspired by Frodo, the main character of The Lord of the Rings. Together with Samu, a graduate in design (Saló’s alter ego), and Gandolfo, a pensioner, Fredo embarks on a journey to get rid of a mortgage that he cannot afford. Despite the common narrative of denouncing the causes of the Spanish economic crisis, in the elaboration of the video and the comic, Saló was aware that he was looking for two different types of public: the comic contained a more adolescent humour, while the video was aimed at a wider audience, everyone from teenagers to the elderly.44 By means of the parallelism established in creating the video and the comic, Saló accomplished a ‘multimodal extension’ of this work, that is to say, the use of audiovisual media that broadens and/or complements an author’s work (in this case, between the published books and the book trailers) by creating relations of intertextuality. In a digital media economy, consumers are precisely being empowered to interact with the content.45 Through conscious design, the author attempts not only to disseminate a specific piece of work but also to engage with the audience by shaping and developing his work in the context of the powerful relationship between text and image in the digital world. Hence, as Saló explains, the dependence between the book trailer and its printed works becomes relevant in his narrative universe, given that his intention was precisely that the video ‘completara un poco la visión y la historia que cuenta el cómic’ [serve to complete the vision and the story narrated in the comic].46 He states as much in Simiocracia: És interessant el joc que es dóna d’anada i tornada, del llibre al vídeo, perquè el llibre cada cop s’assembla més al vídeo, al contrari que a Españistán. És a dir, al llibre ara hi ha molt més text que podria ser una mica com la veu en off que sona en els vídeos, i és interessant aquest joc que es genera, i sobretot en el moment en què estem, en què sembla que els llibres estan patint una crisi de suport; jo crec que se’ls pot encara donar molta vida i crec fermament que si va de la mà d’Internet d’una forma intel·ligent, es poden sumar molt els dos llenguatges, el llenguatge audiovisual i el llenguatge de llibre (. . .) encara no he trobat autors de còmic que utilitzin el doble format de treball de llibre/vídeo. Llavors, en això encara sóc inexpert i encara estic buscant a veure com ha de funcionar la fórmula

44 Televisión Española: Canal 24h, ‘Españistán y Aleix Saló en TVE24h’, YouTube (13 June 2011), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS8Sg0XJy5o. 45 Giuditta de Prato, ‘The Video Games Industry’, in Digital Media Worlds: The New Economy of Media, ed. Jean Paul Simon, Esteve Sanz and Giuditta de Prato (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 163–179. 46 Televisión Española: Canal 24h, ‘Españistán y Aleix Saló en TVE24h’.

240 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes perquè una cosa completi l’altra però a la vegada el vídeo tingui entitat per la seva banda i el llibre tingui entitat per la seva banda.47 [The back-and-forth between the book and the video is interesting because the book increasingly resembles the video, while the opposite happened in Españistán. That is to say, the book now contains much more text, a bit like the voice-over in the video. This is an interesting kind of interaction, especially in the moment we are living in, when it seems that books are going through a crisis. I think that it is still possible to give them a lot of life, and I firmly believe that if it goes hand-in-hand with the internet in an intelligent way, both languages can complement each other: the audiovisual language and the language of the book (. . . ). I have not yet found comics authors that work in this twin book/video format. I am not yet an expert at this, and I am still looking for how this formula should work. While one format completes the other, both the video and the book have their own reasons for being.]

Saló carries out a similar multimodal extension with the book trailers for Simiocracia and Europesadilla. These videos not only contribute to publicise the books, but they also complement them by providing new information and completing the main message. The author t­ailors the type of discourse to each format, but they are deeply interconnected, so together they contribute to broaden the scope of the work. Through the multimodal extension, Aleix Saló not only finds a useful platform to make his works popular, but his intention responds also to the idea of providing the reader with a multimodal vision of his literature, which is more complete and contributes to create new meanings while reinforcing the message and its relevance in order to reach new audiences. The fact that his latest book was published both as a paperback and as an e-book not only in Spanish, as Europesadilla: Alguien se ha comido a la clase media, and Catalan, as Euromalson: Algú s’ha cruspit la classe mitjana, but also in other languages, such as Portuguese, Euro Pesadelo: Quem comeu a classe média?;48 English, Euronight­ mare: Someone Devoured the Middle Class; and Turkish, Eurokâbusu: Biri orta sinifi yedi,49 speaks volumes about the capacity of Saló’s narratives to transcend national borders. Digital comics and the digital media constitute, after all, ‘a gateway to print’.50 Saló is a pioneer in the combination of videos and 47 Zarallo Peretó, ‘Entrevista a Aleix Saló’. 48 Aleix Saló, Euro Pesadelo: Quem comeu a classe média?, trans. J. Pereira (Lisbon: Bertrand Editora, 2013). 49 Aleix Saló, Eurokâbusu: Biri orta sinifi yedi, trans. Arda Koval (Istanbul: Nazlı Ceyhan Sümter, 2014). 50 Todd W. Allen, Economics of Digital Comics (Chicago: Indignant Media, 2014), 1.



Social Criticism through Humour in the Digital Age 241

printed books. He himself recognises that he is still experimenting with the relationship between these different textual media.51 Indeed, the success of this dual narrative strategy (video-comic or vice versa) seeks to fit the evolution of the literary landscape in the Iberian Peninsula, in which a graphic novel can now be as successful and appealing as the latest novel by Paul Auster or Michel Houellebecq.52 Saló’s videos establish a multimodal extension of his books and combine different resources (music, background noise, onomatopoeias, a voice-over which narrates the plot, certain tones of voice to highlight specific moments in the video and the use of intertextuality with references to television and cinema). As we have seen, these aspects are also transferred to paper through the representation of onomatopoeias, the typography of the letters and phonological games, all with the purpose of reinforcing a message of social criticism from the multimodal point of view.

Conclusion The use of the book trailer established Saló’s goal of producing a type of literature with greater outreach, both with regard to the themes he deals with and with regard to his connection with a new audience. As we have seen, the corpus of Saló’s work gives us a humorous portrait of social reality. By developing parallel themes to the political and economic events of the economic crisis, the author transmits his critical vision of society and its workings. In effect, the characteristic multimodality of Saló’s visual literature entails a set of carefully selected components that, taken together, evoke an array of different meanings. More importantly, our analysis demonstrates how the cartoonist offers a clear ­example of the use of the ‘multi­modal extension’ to whet viewers’ appetite and internationalise a given work. In so doing, in his books and videos he succeeds in establishing the very relations of inter­textuality that create new meanings while involving the reader. Such a meaningful use of humour allows the viewers/readers to reflect on the present moment by questioning vital aspects of their social reality, be they political, sociological or economic.

51 El Economista, ‘Aleix Saló: “Controlar el poder político es un deber ciudadano”’ [Aleix Saló: ‘Controlling political power is a citizen’s duty’] YouTube (16 June 2011), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQSPqkHolos. 52 Santiago García, ‘Después del cómic: Una introducción’ [After the comic: An introduction], in Supercómic: Mutaciones de la novela gráfica contemporánea [Super­comic: Mutations of the contemporary graphic novel], ed. Santiago García (Madrid: Errata Naturae, 2013), 7–23 (14).

242 Javier Muñoz-Basols and Marina Massaguer Comes Considering the didactic dimension obtained through this inter­face of text and image, from the book trailer to the comic book and back, Saló’s work serves to illustrate how today’s comics and graphic novels have the capability of making complex and specialised topics not just more accessible and easy to understand for a lay audience, but also more enjoyable and memorable. It is a good example of how the combination of multimodality with social criti­ cism and its circulation in a digital media economy can enable the authors of comics and graphic novels to employ a variety of different techniques in the shaping and development of their work, conscious as they are of the increasingly powerful relationship that exists between text and image in our twenty-first century imaginary.

Javier Muñoz-Basols is a senior instructor in Spanish at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. He has published on Hispanic literature, translation studies and applied linguistics. His current research focuses on the inter­ action between language and culture in various settings, including contemporary graphic literature and humour. He is President of the Asociación para la Enseñanza del Español como Lengua Extranjera (ASELE). Marina Massaguer Comes is a PhD candidate in linguistic anthro­ pology at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). Her research focuses on non-Catalan speakers in Catalonia. She is currently working as a researcher in Sociolinguistics at the University of Barcelona. Before under­taking doctoral studies, Marina conducted postgraduate research on the linguistic dynamics of Catalan Roma communities. She was a lector in Catalan at the University of Oxford between 2012 and 2015.

Chapter 12

Historicising the Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain, 1965–1975 Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

Any examination of the constitution of the Spanish field of comics between 1965 and 1975 requires a detailed contextualisation of wider historical, social and cultural processes across national borders and of the formation of comics cultures in Europe – specifically, France and Italy.1 At a time, late Francoism, when rapid economic and cultural transformations – the rise of mass consumer­ism, the growth of the publishing industry and of media consumption, the burgeoning of popular cultural forms – co­ existed with the realities of dictatorship, Spanish cultural critics 1 A note on the nomenclature adopted throughout the chapter. I use the term ‘comics’, since it emerged as a new critical category in the period under discus­ sion. However, the generic terms tebeo – coined from the comic strip magazine for children TBO: Semanario Festivo Infantil [TBO: Children’s weekly magazine] (1917–1983) and not approved by the Real Academia de la Lengua Española [Royal Academy of Spanish Language] until 1968 – and historieta are maintained when original sources are quoted. All translations of non-English references and quo­ tations are my own unless otherwise indicated.

244

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

and i­ntellectuals adopted new historical and aesthetic categories and sensibilities. They discussed not only comics-­related phenom­ ena but also other popular cultural forms (television, film) ush­ ered in by the nascent age of consumerism. New press legislation introduced in 1966 by (then) Minister of Information and Tourism Manuel Fraga Iribarne (1962–1969) allowed for the apertura [open­ ing up] of expression in the publishing industry. The new law, com­ monly known as the Ley Fraga, allowed, if not an open expression of opinions, at least the print­ ing of opinions with clear glimpses of dissidence in the late 1960s [since] newly minted research centres, publishing houses and politi­ cal magazines emerged under these conditions and provided vehi­ cles for demands for change and debates about the shape of a future where political and cultural freedoms could be exercised.2

This decade saw a surge of writing about the critical status and critical value of comics. The dominant disciplinary perspective until the mid-1960s located tebeos within the domain of children’s literature and press history, with pronouncements about their peda­gogical, moral and religious effect on children.3 In the second half of the decade, a discursive approach through the methodo­ logical lens of press history characterised the work of Antonio Martín Martínez, whose groundbreaking ‘notes’ on the history of the medium in Spain were published across four instalments in the publication Revista de Educación issued by the Ministerio de Infor­ mación y Turismo.4 Simultaneously, with the emergence of com­ munication studies during the final decade of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, whereby public bodies started to engage ‘in research in the field of information, propaganda, public opinion, adver­ tising, and visual communication preferably from a socio­logical perspective’ close to the ideology of the regime,5 there emerged a 2 Núria Triana-Toribio, ‘Film Cultures in Spain’s Transition: The “Other” Tran­ sition in the Film Magazine Nuevo Fotogramas (1968–1978)’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 15, no. 4 (2014), 455–474 (462–463). 3 See Jesús María Vázquez, La prensa infantil en España (Madrid: Editorial Doncel, 1963). 4 See Antonio Martín Martínez, ‘Apuntes para una historia de los tebeos I: Los periódicos para la infancia (1833–1917)’ [Notes for a history of comics I: News­ papers for children], Revista de Educación 194 (1967), 98–106; ‘Apuntes para una historia de los tebeos II: La civilización de la imagen (1917–1936)’ [The civilisa­ tion of the image], Revista de Educación 195 (1968), 7–21; ‘Apuntes para una his­ toria de los tebeos III: Tiempos heroicos del tebeo español (1936–1946)’ [Heroic times of the Spanish comic], Revista de Educación 196 (1968), 61–74; ‘Apuntes para una historia de los tebeos IV: El tebeo, cultura de masas (1946–1963)’ [The comics, mass culture], Revista de Educación 197 (1968), 125–141. 5 Nelson Ribeiro, ‘Communication Studies in the Iberian Peninsula: A Compar­ ative Analysis of the Field’s Development in Portugal and Spain’, in The Inter­



The Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain 245

new generation of cultural critics inspired by the intellectual and theoretical developments associated with the formation and organi­ sation of comics criticism in France around the fanzine Giff-Wiff: Bulletin des Bandes Dessinées (1962–1967), which was instigated by the journalist and writer Francis Lacassin and accompanied by the research of Italian mass media theorists – notable in this regard was Umberto Eco and his highly influential Apocalittici e integrati, translated into Spanish as Apocalípticos e integrados in 1968.6 In order fully to historicise the emergence of Spanish comics studies, this chapter proposes to engage critically with a variety of contemporary material in order to examine the range of different positions, tastes and sensibilities, official and emerging, that of­ fered competing interpretations of comics in book-length studies produced by the first wave of pioneering critics, feature articles in popular culture magazines and the press, and fanzines. Luis Gasca, in Tebeo y cultura de masas, reflected on the diverse impe­ tuses propelling European comics criticism forward from art his­ tory to didactics to semiology.7 When the pop culture critic Terenci Moix turned to comics in Los ‘comics’: Arte para el consumo y formas ‘pop’, he read camp and nostalgia as cultural phenomena reveal­ ing the mechanics underlying the production and consumption of cultural products like comics. 8 Leading academic journals such as Estudios de Información, which was affiliated with the Secretaría Técnica del Ministerio de Información y Turismo, devoted a double issue to the study of comics in 1971, documenting the state of an incipient Spanish comics field and, in the process, conferring cul­ tural respectability upon the medium.9 The first fanzines came to light during this decade, too: Cuto: Boletín Español del Comic (Luis Gasca, 1967–1968), ¡Bang! fanzine de los tebeos españoles (Antonio Martín and Antonio Lara, 1968–1977) and Comics Camp Comics In (Mariano Ayuso, 1972–1975). My initial theoretical and methodological framework is specifi­ cally informed by Luc Boltanski’s ‘The Constitution of the Comics

national History of Communication Study, ed. Peter Simonson and David W. Park (New York: Routledge, 2015), 152–170 (162). 6 Umberto Eco, Apocalittici e integrati [Apocalypse postponed] (Milano: Casa Ed. Bompiani, 1964); translated in Spanish as Apocalípticos e integrados (Barcelona: Editorial Lumen, 1968). 7 Luis Gasca, Tebeo y cultura de masas [Comics and mass culture] (Madrid: Editorial Prensa Española, 1966). 8 Terenci Moix, Los ‘comics’: Arte para el consumo y formas ‘pop’ [‘Comics’: An art for consumption and ‘pop’ forms] (Barcelona: Llibres de Sinera, 1968), 43–61. 9 Estudios de Información 19–20 (1971).

246

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

Field’ (1975),10 a ‘Pierre Bourdieu–inspired analysis’ that traces the appearance and formation of the comics field in France through­ out the 1960s and the early 1970s.11 The present chapter builds on other Bourdieusian notions beyond those of the intellectual field, class ­habitus and the logics of distinction as they are deployed by ­Boltanski. Of particular significance is the role of what Bourdieu calls ‘cultural inter­mediaries’ – that is to say, those cultural produc­ ers and commentators whose practices, dispositions and tastes con­ tribute to the mediation, intellectualisation and popularisation of symbolic goods.12 Here, the activities, dispositions and writings of individual figures like Gasca and Martín, among others, are placed in relation to social and cultural networks of scholars. The consti­ tution of the field in Spain is relatively underexplored and under­ theorised in comparison to the French tradition, where Bolanski’s article stands as a critical landmark.13 Given the lack of translations of the works of Spanish pioneers into English, mainstream scholar­ ship on comics studies has made cursory references to the Spanish context or has omitted it altogether. In ‘The W ­ inding, Pot-Holed Road of Comic Art Scholarship’, John Lent abridges Spain’s con­ tribution to research on comics during these decades to the figure of Gasca, who is described as ‘a major writer about comics, often Ameri­can ones’, whose ‘articles appeared in newspapers and maga­ zines’.14 Charles Hatfield’s foreword to the recent The Secret Origins of Comics Studies is almost entirely US-centered in its (re)telling of the history of American comics studies with the exception of a gesture to ‘the larger trajectory of French Comics ­Studies’.15 In this same volume, Ian Horton acknowledges in his chapter on art-­ 10 Published as ‘La Constitution du champ de la bande dessinée’, Actes de la Re­ cherche en Sciences Sociales 1 (1975), 37–59. The English translation by Ann Miller, from which this chapter takes its quotations, is available in Ann Miller and Bart Beaty, eds, The French Comics Theory Reader (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2014), 281–301. 11 Miller and Beaty, The French Comics Theory Reader, 276. 12 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (London: Routledge, 1984), 366. 13 For English-language accounts of the establishment of French comics scholar­ ship as an object of critical attention, see Ann Miller, Reading Bande Dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-Language Comic Strip (Bristol: Intellect, 2007); Laurence Grove, Comics in French: The European Bande Dessinée in Context (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010). 14 John Lent, ‘The Winding, Pot-Holed Road of Comic Art Scholarship’, Studies in Comics 1, no. 1 (2010), 7–33 (20). Lent’s exhaustive international bibliographies, including Comic Art of Europe Through 2000: An International Bibliography (West­ port, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), list other Spanish pioneers beyond Gasca. 15 Charles Hatfield, ‘Foreword: Comics Studies, the Anti-discipline’, in The Secret Origins of Comics Studies, ed. Matthew Smith and Randy Duncan (New York: Routledge, 2017), xi–xxii (xvi).



The Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain 247

historical approaches to the study of comics in both France and the English-speaking world in the 1960s and 1970s that there are tra­ ditions ‘in Spanish (both European and South American), I­ talian, and German that deal with the origins of the art form but they are not translated into English and consequently their impact on the international field of Comics Studies is more limited’.16 Since a detailed analysis of the emerging field of ­Spanish comics art ­scholarship between 1965 and 1975 remains to be written – be it in English or Spanish – this chapter seeks to tease out a more nuanced cultural history of the constitution of the field in Spain and to contribute to a wider reconfiguration of Spanish comics art scholarship that is distinguished by transnational flows and by im­ portations of theoretical and methodological explorations of the medium which are also constitutive of the field.

Transferring Legitimacy In ‘La Constitution du champ de la bande dessinée’, Boltanski pro­ vides a detailed sociological examination of the transformations in the production, reception and circulation of comics, looking in par­ ticular at the mechanisms, practices and dispositions that contrib­ uted to the cultural elevation and legitimation of comics and their study. Among the ‘mechanisms that accompany the appearance of a field when it is structured according to the model of high culture’, Boltanski notes, is ‘the creation of an apparatus (magazines, con­ ferences, prizes, publishers, educational institutions, etc.)’ which contributes to the process of the celebration and legitimation of the field.17 Legitimation, argues Boltanski, is central to the emergence of new fields of study. Boltanski identifies the ‘simple transfer of the most ritualized techniques of scholarly routine’,18 the ‘discourse of celebration’ and the bestowing upon comics of ‘the antiquity that is constitutive of every legitimate cultural tradition’19 as key mechanisms and strategies to elevate the cultural and symbolic capital of comics. Throughout the 1960s, legitimacy was transferred to the study of comics from multiple quarters in the Spanish context. Titles such as Antonio Lara’s ‘Un nuevo arte nos ha nacido’,20 included in the 16 Ian Horton, ‘The Historians of the Art Form’, in Smith and Duncan, The Secret Origins of Comics Studies, 56–67 (67). 17 Boltanski, ‘The Constitution of the Comics Field’, 281. 18 Ibid., 287. 19 Ibid., 288. 20 Antonio Lara, ‘Un nuevo arte nos ha nacido’ [A new art has been born], Cuadernos para el Diálogo [Notebooks for the dialogue], extra summer issue (1967), 50–54.

248

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

monthly cultural magazine Cuadernos para el Diálogo as part of an issue devoted to current cultural trends (‘Cultura Hoy’), or Ramón Muñoz Suay’s ‘La seriedad del “comic”’,21 which were printed in the popular film magazine Nuevo Fotogramas, literally vindicated the artistic, cultural and intellectual worthiness of the medium. ‘Un nuevo arte nos ha nacido’ unashamedly heralded the status of comics as art. Lara welcomed the fact that ‘revistas prestigiosas se ocupen del tema con un rigor total, desprovisto de frivolidad’ [prestigious magazines (like Cuadernos para el Diálogo) covered this topic with total rigour, devoid of any type of frivolity], despite the fact that comics seemed to be at the time ‘un tema de moda’ [a fashion­able topic] (‘frivolity’ is a loaded term that was bandied around in many a review).22 Lara was unequivocal in his assess­ ment of comics: ‘El problema consiste en que los tebeos han sido ignorados por la “crítica” estética oficial que, sin examinarlos, los ha relegado al papel de entretenimiento infantil, como algo sin valor’ [the problem is that tebeos have been ignored by the official aesthetic ‘criticism’ that, without having examined them, has rele­ gated them to the sole purpose of entertaining children, ascribing no value to them].23 For Lara, the cultural validation of comics in­ tersected with the wider ‘rehabilitación de géneros tradicionalmente ­menores – la novela policíaca, de terror, de ciencia ficción’ [rehabil­ itation of genres traditionally considered to be minor – the detective novel, the horror novel, the science-fiction novel], as well as with popular ­cinema.24 Con­comitant with their participation in the con­ stitution of the comics field, Gasca and Moix, for example, were embracing popular film genres and displaying their respective connoisseurship of inter­national horror and fantasy traditions and Spanish and Hollywood melo­d rama in the pages of Nuevo Foto­ gramas and Terror Fantastic. But, in order to ­elevate the lowbrow to the models of the fields of high culture, academic habits and dispositions had to be transferred. Lara called for ‘expertos en So­ ciología, Psicología, artes plásticas, escritores, dibujantes’ [experts in sociology, psychology, fine arts, writers, artists] to ‘parcelar el terreno de trabajo’ [stake out the field of work]. Critics were needed to work on the ‘historia de los personajes’ [history of characters], historians were needed to reconstruct the ‘textos estropeados por la censura’ [texts ­mangled by censorship] and publishers were needed 21 Ramón Muñoz Suay, ‘La seriedad del “comic”’ [The seriousness of the ‘comic’], Nuevo Fotogramas [New frames] (17 January 1969), 31. 22 Lara, ‘Un nuevo arte’, 54. 23 Ibid., 51. 24 Ibid., 53; emphasis in the original.



The Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain 249

to ‘editar los ejemplares perdidos o escasos’ [publish texts that have been lost or are rare]. 25 A year later, the publisher Edicusa spon­ sored the publication of Lara’s El apasionante mundo del tebeo26 as a 1968 supplement to Cuadernos para el Diálogo, granting further prestige and symbolic capital to the new art. In ‘The Seriousness of “Comics”’ – which was partly a reflection on Gasca’s and Moix’s volumes – the film critic Muñoz Suay considers the particulari­ ties of contemporary Spanish comics culture: on the one hand, he argues, the conditions of possibility for writing about comics as legitimate objects of cultural analysis must be located ‘más allá de nuestras fronteras, y ya atendiendo a los estudios que sobre los “comics” nos iban llegando, fuimos configurando nuevas tesis’ [beyond our frontiers, and then taking note of those studies about comics that were reaching us, we began to configure new theses]; on the other hand, ‘en España la “cultura” de los “comics” está vin­ culada, como historicidad y como vivencia, a una educación escolar de posguerra que, durante tantos años, ha estado reflejada en ese género de publicaciones’ [in Spain ‘comics culture’ is linked, as historicity and as lived experience, to a post-war school education, which was reflected in these types of publications].27 To be sure, the writings of Lara and Muñoz Suay may suggest a forthright celebra­ tory discourse, but the publications that endorsed the artistic and serious status of comics also situate the legitimation of the field in a broader context. Madrid-based Cuadernos para el Diálogo and Barcelona-based Nuevo Fotogramas played significant roles in im­ porting and disseminating international developments in culture, and they aligned themselves in different yet complementary ways with anti-Francoist positions. Outlets for studies of comics in cultural monthlies and in popu­ lar culture magazines increased the cultural capital and worthiness of the medium. The publishing houses that put the first studies on comics written in Spanish into circulation increased their in­ tellectual and literary legitimacy. Gasca’s Tebeo y cultura de masas, published by Editorial Prensa Española, partook of the ‘significant increase in the production of books dealing with communication topics, namely public opinion, journalism and media history (still known as press history)’.28 Moix’s Los ‘comics’ and Román Gubern’s

25 Ibid., 54. 26 Antonio Lara, El apasionante mundo del tebeo [The thrilling world of the comic] (Madrid: Editorial Cuadernos para el Diálogo, 1968). 27 Muñoz Suay, ‘La seriedad del “comic”’, 31. 28 Ribeiro, ‘Communication Studies in the Iberian Peninsula’, 161.

250

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

El lenguaje de los comics,29 however, came out in a different milieu; they were published by Llibres de Sinera and Ediciones Península, respectively, two Barcelona publishing houses at the vanguard of the editorial world in Spain at the time. Within these editorial con­ texts of production and distribution, the prologue might be said to function as one of the ‘most ritualized techniques of scholarly rou­ tine’ for the transference of symbolic and cultural capital30 and, of course, prestige from academic figures associated with established disciplines to a younger generation of popular and mass culture specialists. While the prologues of Tebeo y cultura de masas and Los ‘comics’ were authored by recognised academic voices, by the time El lenguaje de los comics was published in the early 1970s, it was Gasca himself who was legitimising the work of a fellow young media critic and thereby confirming a significant shift in the for­ mation of the comics field and the standing of its social actors. Not coincidentally, reviews of these pioneering texts followed a com­ parable trajectory, for commentators on Tebeo y cultura de masas and Los ‘comics’ belonged to the editorial worlds out of which the critical projects had emerged. Critical reception, therefore, read these founding texts on comics against dominant and residual his­ torical and cultural dispositions towards the role of mass media in education and society and against fresh and urgent attempts to appreciate contemporary popular cultural production. Tebeo y cultura de masas is prefaced by the internationally re­ nowned Spanish psychiatrist Juan José López-Ibor, an influen­ tial voice in academic and intellectual circles. Those expecting allusions to the Ameri­can psychiatrist Fredric Wertham and his Seduction of the Innocent (1954) would be disappointed, for LópezIbor approaches Gasca’s book as the duty of a scholar who must ‘tomar conciencia del tiempo presente’ [become aware of our present times] where tebeos – a ‘tipo de literatura infantil’ [type of children’s literature]31 – are to be understood in relation to develop­ ments in mass culture and the predominance of images. LópezIbor pondered that ‘la apetencia por determinado tipo de héroes en la sociedad de masas’ [the desire for particular types of heroes in mass-­culture ­society] calls for an analysis of their influence – not necessarily harmful, as Wertham had put it – in the psychologi­ cal development of children. And López-Ibor asked, ‘¿Qué nos dicen sobre nosotros mismos esas manifestaciones de la cultura 29 Román Gubern, El lenguaje de los comics [The language of comics] (Barcelona: Ediciones Península, 1972). 30 Boltanski, ‘The Constitution of the Comics Field’, 287. 31 Juan José López-Ibor, ‘Prólogo’, in Gasca, Tebeo y cultura de masas, 9–11 (10).



The Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain 251

contemporánea?’ [What do these manifestations of contemporary culture tell us about ourselves?] More specifically, he wanted to know what they tell us about the ‘mitología infantil’ [children’s mythology] and its persistence into adulthood in a ‘mundo des­ mitificado’ [de­mythologised world].32 Reviews of Gasca’s book em­ phasised without fail the psycho-­pedagogical potential of comics and the formative role of mass communication media. The ABC reviewer, Alfonso Álvarez Villar, an active researcher at the Insti­ tuto de la Opinión Pública and an editorial member of the Revista Española de la Opinión Pública, wondered whether ‘el “tebeo” [es] mera diversión y pasatiempo’ [the ‘tebeo’ is simple entertainment and a pastime] or whether ‘contiene, como un pequeño cartucho de dinamita, potencias insospechadas para la formación o la des­ integración de la sociedad’ [contains, like a small dynamite car­ tridge, unsuspected powers for the education or disintegration of ­society].33 While ­Á lvarez Villar did not attempt to answer the ques­ tion in the review, his position had been made clear the previous year in his article ‘Supermán, mito de nuestro tiempo’, where he had condemned the damaging influence of Super­man comics, and, by (tacit) extension, American popular culture on Spanish chil­ dren.34 As the prologue and the review of Tebeo y cultura de masas demonstrate, its reception was framed through the educational, psychological and sociological concerns arising from the impact of comics on Spanish public opinion and contemporary culture. Moix’s text came out in a very different intellectual and pub­ lishing milieu. Barcelona was at the forefront of the dissemination of contemporary European and Latin American literary texts in ­Spanish or Catalan translations with publishing ventures such as Editorial Seix Barral since the late 1950s, Edicions 62 from 1962 onwards and Editorial Lumen in the late 1960s. Seix Barral is accredited with leading ‘a renovation of Spain’s literature and its dissemination abroad, bold marketing of Latin American ­w riters globally (. . .) and the translation and diffusion of European ­avant-garde writers in Spain’.35 Edicions 62 and Editorial Lumen promoted ­particularly ‘the publication of texts exploring new trends in popular culture (music, photography, comics, films) ­considered 32 Ibid., 11. 33 Alfonso Álvarez Villar, ‘El Tebeo pequeño gigante’, ABC (4 March 1967), 27. 34 Superman comics had been banned in Spain in 1964 by the Comisión de Infor­ mación y Publicaciones Infantiles y Juveniles. Alfonso Álvarez Villar, ‘Supermán, mito de nuestro tiempo’[Superman, myth of our time], Revista Española de la Opinión Pública [Spanish journal of public opinion] 6 (1966): 217–246. 35 Tatjana Pavlovic´, The Mobile Nation: España cambia de piel (1954–1964) [The mobile nation: Spain changes skin] (Bristol: Intellect, 2011), 60.

252

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

important at that moment’.36 Los ‘comics’ certainly benefited from this editorial milieu. The prologue was written by Joaquim Marco, a recognised Catalan editor, literary critic and scholar, who was a pivotal figure in the world of publishing and criticism on the Bar­ celona literary scene, and he was actively engaged in the publishing strategies of Llibres de Sinera. Marco reflected several critical topoi around mass culture in general and comics in particular in relation to older media and high culture: the distrust of new languages, the artistic and literary aspirations of comics, and the influence of popular forms in high culture in Western literary traditions. However, Marco ended with a significant intervention by elevating comics to adult status and by making a proposal – similar to that put forward by López-Ibor – to withhold ideological and intellectual biases towards the commercial and artistic values of comics. In his words, ‘El cómic no es una mani­festación dirigida al público infantil, como algunos pueden suponer’ [Comics are not a product addressed to a child readership, like some people may assume]37 because ‘el autor de cómics ha sido un adulto que ha pensado en adulto e, involuntaria o deliberadamente, se ha dirigido a un pú­ blico adulto’ [the comics producer is an adult who thinks as an adult and who, unintentionally or deliberately, is addressing an adult readership].38 Adopting a deferential position, Marco concluded that Moix’s volume ‘ilumina un género, cuyas posibilidades y rea­ lizaciones sólo empezamos a comprender’ [sheds light on a genre whose potential and products we can only begin to comprehend].39 Los ‘comics’ was reviewed in the most relevant Catalan cul­ tural magazines of the period, among them El Ciervo and Destino. Worthy of note is the review in El Ciervo because Moix’s book was discussed in conjunction with the Spanish translation of Eco’s Apocalittici e i­ntegrati, which was published that same year by Editorial Lumen. Both books, according to critic Enrique Sordo, traversed similar territories – ‘pop’ cultural forms like comics, film, television and pop music – and responded to ‘fenómenos tecno­e cómicos que necesitan de la revolución económica de la clase media para desarrollarse plenamente’ [techno-economic phenomena dependent on the economic revolution of the middle classes to attain their full realisation].40 In Destino, Josep Maria 36 Mercedes Mazquiarán de Rodríguez, ‘La Mosca Revisited: Documenting the “Voice” of Barcelona’s Gauche Divine’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 9, no. 1 (2008), 35–59 (37). 37 Joaquim Marco, ‘Prólogo’, in Moix, Los ‘comics’, 15–23 (21–22). 38 Ibid., 22; emphasis in the original. 39 Ibid., 23. 40 Enrique Sordo, ‘Cultura de masas’, El Ciervo [The deer] (April 1969), 15–16.



The Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain 253

Carandell proclaimed, ‘Els comics a la universitat!’ [Comics in the ­university!],41 imagining Moix as the lecturer conveying the con­ temporaneity and the proximity of comics to a new generation of students set to modernise the university curriculum. Barcelona was at the centre of the staging of colloquia, round tables, book launchings and exhibitions. In comparable fashion to what had happened on the literary scene since the early 1960s and what was happening with the Barcelona School of film-making in the late 1960s,42 Barcelona became the central port of call for the exchange of cultural theories and methodologies and the circu­ lation of intellectual trends developing in Europe and across the Atlantic. The launching of Gubern’s book (El lenguaje de los comics) in May 1972 is a case in point, since it articulates the convergence of social and cultural actors around the ‘Creation of Events’, to use B ­ oltanski’s phrase.43 The book’s presentation also acted as the opening of an exhibition of the work of Enric Sió, who the year before had been awarded the prestigious Yellow Kid prize in New York for best foreign artist. Held in the culturally innovative Sala Aixelá in Barcelona and promoted by the Bocaccio nightclub, re­ nowned for its association with the city’s gauche divine, the event brought together the vanguard of Barcelona’s culturati and of the editorial world to celebrate, in the words of Gubern, the interna­ tional success of ‘la escuela de cómic de Barcelona’ [the Barcelona school of comics] epitomised by Sió and to vindicate, according to the art critic Alexandre Cirici, ‘la capacidad de profundización del cómic’ [the intellectual capabilities of comics].44 Cirici was also accompanied by the literary critic José María Castellet in his ca­ pacity as general editor of the publishing house Península, which was created under the auspices of its parent company, Edicions 62. This exhibition-cum-presentation is a prime example of the inter­ section of comics with cultural interlocutors from the worlds of lit­ erature and art history, as well as the intensification of interactions ‘­between the comics field and the intellectual field’ according to the operation of scholarly models.45 41 Josep Maria Carandell, ‘R. T. Moix y los comics’ [R. T. Moix and the comics], Destino [Destiny] (January 1969), 39. 42 Rosalind Galt, ‘Mapping Catalonia in 1967: The Barcelona School in Global Context’, Senses of Cinema (November 2006), http://sensesofcinema.com/2006/ feature-articles/barcelona-school. 43 Boltanski, ‘The Constitution of the Comics Field’, 289. 44 [Alexandre Cirici], ‘Exposición de Enric Sió y presentación del libro “El lenguaje de los comics”’ [Exhibition by Enric Siò and the presentation of the book ‘The language of comics’], La Vanguardia Española [The Spanish vanguard] (9 May 1972), 31. The article is unsigned. 45 Boltanski, ‘The Constitution of the Comics Field’, 289.

254

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

If anything, this book-launching party was yet another iteration of similar events staged by young Catalan intellectuals and cultural practitioners in Barcelona. Five years earlier, in February 1967, a cluster of Italian scholars based in Palermo, known as Gruppo 63, had been invited to an interdisciplinary colloquium on the theme of avant-garde art and politically committed art in the context of contemporary popular and mass culture and mass media. The vis­ iting scholars included Gillo Dorfles, Antonio Porta and Umberto Eco. The colloquium was held at the recently instituted independ­ ent Escuela de Diseño Eina, amongst whose founding members were Román Gubern, Alexandre Cirici, Albert Ràfols and Francesc Tous, and which pioneered the delivery of industrial, graphic and interior design courses. Organised by members of Eina, including Gubern and Cirici, and facilitated by B ­ eatriz de Moura of Editorial Lumen, who was extremely well connected ‘with Italian publishing houses and Italian writers’, the colloquium, thanks to the impact of the Gruppo 63, had an effect that ‘would be felt in the years to come’.46 As Gubern acknowledged in his memoirs Viaje de ida [One-way trip] (1997), the ‘contact with European intellectuals, in particular Eco, made the home group aware of their need to update their “mochila cultural” [cultural kit]’.47 The study of comics fea­ tured prominently during the three-day visit. The interdisciplinary colloquium, as Mazquiarán Rodríguez has documented, led to the creation of La Mosca [The fly], ‘an “underground” publication dis­ guised as a “Boletín de novedades” [newsletter]’, announcing ‘new offerings by the participating publishing houses (Edicions 62, Seix Barral, and Lumen)’.48 La Mosca buzzed for seven issues between December 1967 and December 1969, and amongst its contributors were members of the Barcelona group of intellectuals and profes­ sionals already mentioned in this chapter: Castellet, Sió, Muñoz Suay, Gubern, Cirici, de Moura and Ràfols. When Eco returned to Barcelona two years later, in February 1969, for the presentation of the Spanish translation of Apocalípticos e integrados by Editorial Lumen, the visit was deemed by the magazine Triunfo as a unique opportunity for ‘los jóvenes intelectuales españoles más rigurosos (. . .) para estrechar los vínculos que deben unirnos a la cultura europea contemporánea, cuya problemática suele formularse con tanto retraso entre nosotros’ [the most rigorous young Spanish in­ tellectuals (. . .) to strengthen the links that must bring us closer to contemporary European culture, whose questions tend to be 46 Mazquiarán de Rodríguez, ‘La Mosca Revisited’, 35. 47 Ibid., 37. 48 Ibid., 35.



The Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain 255

formulated so belatedly amongst us].49 Leading the proceedings were, once again, Gubern, Gasca and Sió, whose work was exhib­ ited alongside that of fellow Catalan comics artists Josep María Beà and Esteban Maroto.

Cultural Intermediaries: From Gasca to Bang! A key attribute of cultural intermediaries, write Jennifer Smith ­Maguire and Julian Matthews, is ‘the ability (. . .) to undertake the construction of legitimacy’ through ‘transposing the hallmarks of established authority (. . .) on to new cultural forms [and] on ­particular forms of capital and subjective dispositions’.50 More­ over, cultural inter­mediaries, as Bourdieu conceptualises them in Distinction, are ‘a group of taste makers and need merchants whose work is part and parcel of an economy that requires the production of consuming tastes and dispositions’.51 Amongst the occupations associated with this concept, Bourdieu cites ‘the pro­ ducers of cultural programmes on TV and radio or the critics of “quality” newspapers and magazines and all the writer-journalists and journalist-writers’, whose profession involves ‘presentation and representation (sales, marketing, advertising, public relations, fash­ ion, decoration and so forth)’. 52 Within the Spanish context of a developing consumer economy, of an increasing attention to mass media history, and an emerging ‘new’ petite bourgeoisie, figures like Gasca, Martín and Lara acted as intermediaries participat­ ing in actual processes of legitimation and of mediation between producers and consumers, and as connected agents and groups within the field. Gasca’s multiple facets as a journalist-writer or a writer-journalist, as fanzine editor or as editorial director, to name but a few hats that he wore, certainly fit this Bourdieusian concept. Similarly, Martín and Lara as the editors of Bang! played critical roles in forming a critical discourse on comics. Gasca’s bourgeois upbringing in the Basque city of San Se­ bastián, his university education at the University of Zaragoza, where he graduated in law, and his professional participation as a teacher in the new higher education degree programmes launched at the Jesuit-funded Estudios Universitarios y Técnicos 49 Eduardo G. Rico, ‘El comic y la cultura de masas’, Triunfo (15 February 1969), 30–34 (34). 50 Jennifer Smith Maguire and Julian Matthews, ‘Bourdieu on Cultural Inter­ mediaries’, in The Cultural Intermediaries Reader, ed. Jennifer Smith ­Maguire and Julian ­Matthews (London: Sage, 2014), 15–24 (21). 51 Ibid., 15. 52 Bourdieu, Distinction, 325.

256

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

de ­Guipúzcoa (EUTG),53 where he taught courses on tourism and advertising between 1963 and 1968, locates him squarely within the new petite bourgeoisie that Bourdieu describes in Distinction. As part of the activities of the EUTG, he founded the Centro de Expresión Gráfica, a collective that brought together comics studies pioneers from other parts of Spain such as Lara and Martín, and edited the first Spanish fanzine, Cuto: Boletín Español del Comic – a total of three issues – between May 1967 and October 1968.54 The first two front covers, which were devoted to the American charac­ ters Rip Kirby and Steve Canyon, respectively, displayed the sensi­ bilities of the time: a nostalgic nod to classic US comics strips and a critical gesture to Eco’s original 1962 reading of Milton Caniff. The third – and final – cover designed by the up-and-coming Basque illustrator and comics artist Juan Carlos Eguillor conveyed the en­ counter between comics and pop art (Illustration 12.1). Through­ out 1968, he also published the weekly section ‘Los Comics’ for the Basque daily El Correo Español, disseminating writings about comics to a broad public. The proximity of San Sebastián to the French border, combined with the financial resources afforded to him by virtue of his class, enabled Gasca to travel regularly to Paris to immerse himself in the vibrant French comics scene by attending events, frequenting the famous bookshop Le Minotaure, joining newly created associations and interacting with a wider network of comics art scholars across Europe and beyond. This is how he joined the Centre d’études des littératures d’expression graphique (CELEG), becoming the Spanish correspondent in the mid-1960s, and came to contribute to Francis Lacassin’s Giff-Wiff. Similarly, his presence at the first international comics conventions gave Gasca first-hand access to the burgeoning intellectual field of comics c­ riticism as well as to various national markets. Such was the case with the Salone Inter­nazionale dei Comics de Bordighera held from 21 February to 2 March 1965.55 Here, Gasca, and many other European comics enthusiasts and pioneering scholars, absorbed newly ­emerging approaches to the study of comics carried out in the fields of p ­ edagogy, sociology,

53 The EUTG was located on what it is now the campus of the University of Deusto in San Sebastián. 54 The title of the fanzine is an homage to 1940s Spanish comics character Cuto and his creator, Jesús Blasco (1919–1995). 55 Gasca also participated in the Primera Bienal Mundial de la Historieta in Buenos Aires organised by David Lipszyc and Oscar Masotta in 1968 and in La Première Convention Européenne de la Bande Dessinée celebrated in Paris the following year.



The Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain 257

Illustration 12.1. Eguillor’s artwork design for the cover of Cuto in line with pop art. Cuto: Boletín Español del Comic 3. Artwork © 1968, reproduced with the kind permission of Luis Gasca and Biblioteca de Koldo Mitxelena ­Kulturunea – Diputación Foral de Guipúzcoa (Fondo Luis Gasca).

258

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

mass communication and archival research.56 The French and Ital­ ian networks – CELEG and the Rome-based Instituto di Scienza della Communicazioni di Massa, respectively – linked up in Lucca a year later for an event that Gasca reported on for Triunfo in an ­article entitled ‘La Venecia del comic se llama Lucca’.57 Frequenting these circuits, Gasca operated as a link to contemporary comics cultures in Europe and as an inter­mediary in the dissemination and promotion of currents of influence for the study of comics. By 1966, Gasca was at the heart of what Lacassin described in a GiffWiff editorial as ‘la deuxième année de la consécration’ [the second year of the consecration] of comics as an art comparable to film and television.58 A final example should suffice to establish Gasca’s ­assiduousness in the critical and industrial development of the field in Spain: his work as editorial director for San S ­ ebastián–based Buru-­L an and for Editorial Pala. Through Buru-Lan, Gasca em­ barked upon a series of projects that ranged from the re­publication of classic American comics in Spanish to be distributed in the Spanish and Latin American markets, to the diffusion of the genre work of Spanish comics pro­ducers like Beà, Sió and Maroto in the form of collectable fascicles in the magazine D ­ rácula (1972–1973). In the summer of 1968, a new fanzine entered the scene. In its first issue, a brief piece by Gasca, ‘De “Cuto” a “Bang”’, welcomed its ‘hermano pequeño madrileño’ [smaller brother from Madrid] and endorsed the enterprise led by Martín and Lara to address the ‘carencia de estudios concienzudos que aporten nuevas luces sobre la historia y las implicaciones de este medio de comunicación’ [lack of diligent studies that can shed new light on the history and the critical implications of this medium of communication].59 Martín and Lara returned the compliment on the same page, ­acknowledging that Cuto had paved the way for the study of comics in Spain with a reference to Antonio Machado’s well-known verse ‘caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar’ [wayfarer, there is no way, make your way by going farther],60 an apt image to capture the pioneering work of this first generation of critics. 56 The convention was organised by the Istituto di Pedagogia dell’ Università di Roma, the Centro di Sociologia delle Comunicazioni di Massa and the Archivio Italiano della Stampa a Fumetti. 57 Luis Gasca, ‘La Venecia del comic se llama Lucca’ [The Venice of comics is called Lucca], Triunfo (15 October 1966), 69–71. 58 Francis Lacassin, ‘9ème ART, AN II’ [Ninth Art, Year II], Giff-Wiff 22 (1966), 1–2 (1). 59 Luis Gasca, ‘De “Cuto” a “Bang”’, ¡Bang! fanzine de los tebeos españoles 0 (August 1968), 3. 60 Antonio Martín and Antonio Lara, ‘Caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar’, ¡Bang! fanzine de los tebeos españoles 0 (August 1968), 3.



The Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain 259

Named ¡Bang! fanzine de los tebeos españoles for the first three issues (00, 0 and 1), ¡Bang! Hora actual de la historieta española (issue 2) and simply ¡Bang! (issue 3), it finally settled as Bang! información y estudios sobre la historieta as of issue 4 in January 1971, although it was popularly known as Cuadernos Bang!, it was the most ambi­ tious and sustained attempt at providing analysis and criticism of comics with a total of fourteen issues published between 1968 and 1977 (Illustration 12.2).61 The publication came out of the activities of the association GELPI (Grupo de Estudio de las Literaturas Po­ pulares y de la Imagen) – clearly modelled on the French CELEG (Centre d’études des littératures d’expression graphique), whose founding aim was to bring together Spanish specialists working on the study of popular and industrial art. Until 1972, the editors also released fifty-eight bulletins only to be distributed amongst its subscribers for free. In its two manifestations, as fanzine and bulletin, Bang! became synonymous with the language of comics. By 1968, Martín’s and Lara’s professional credentials and connoisseur­ship of the medium were firmly established in the field. Both had graduated in journalism with dissertations on ­Spanish tebeos from the disciplinary perspectives of children’s literature and press history. While Martín, who had graduated as a ‘Técnico de Prensa Infantil’ from the Escuela Oficial de Periodismo in 1964, published his ‘notes’ on the history of the medium in Spain and contributed regularly to Gaceta de la Prensa Española and Triunfo, Lara produced a dissertation on the serial El Guerrero del Antifaz while he was attending the Escuela de Periodismo de la Iglesia in 1965. Like Gasca, Martín and Lara found in fanzines a medium through which to display and dissemi­nate their technical knowl­ edge and through which to connect networks of ideas, people and texts. In the opening pages of their second issue in November 1968, Martín and Lara presented themselves as cultural ­intermediaries and curators. With a call to arms, they appealed for the need to unite for a common cause and to establish a productive partnership between editors, contributors and readers to achieve the following: ediciones especiales de todas las páginas míticas de las que todos hablan sin casi conocerlas, noticias de última hora, estudios mono­ gráficos sobre personajes y autores, diapositivas, pases privados de películas, biblioteca, originales dedicados, colecciones completas para consulta, etc., etc.

61 Martín became the sole editor once he relocated to Barcelona in 1970 for pro­ fessional reasons as a technical editor for the Grupo Editorial Godó.

260

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

Illustration 12.2. Aficionados, collectors and scholars had in Bang! an in­ dispensable source of information on comics. Bang! información y estudios sobre la historieta 4. Artwork © 1971, reproduced with the kind permission of Antonio Martín.



The Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain 261 [special editions of all the classic comics that everybody talks about without really knowing them, up-to-date news, monographs on key characters and authors, slides, private screenings, free access to libraries, signed originals, complete collections to be consulted, etc., etc.] 62

Bang! aimed to reach a vast social and cultural spectrum of con­ sumers and readers who were interested in ‘la historieta, el tebeo y el “comic”, (. . .) médicos, abogados, albañiles, dibujantes, obreros, arquitectos y electricistas, peritos y editores, sociólogos e historia­ dores’ [the historieta, the tebeo and ‘comics’, (. . .) doctors, lawyers, bricklayers, draughtsmen, workers, architects and electricians, qualified technicians and publishers, sociologists and historians], that is to say, those consuming culture as well as those researching culture.63 The aspirations and commitment of Martín and Lara ex­ tended to the circulation and distribution of Bang! nationwide and beyond. There was a team of correspondents in Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, San Sebastián and Valencia, and international counterparts in Belgium, Italy and Switzerland. While the first issues were only available via subscription, Bang! was soon being distributed in specialist libraries in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville and Valencia and made available to international aficionados for $1.50. Bang! announced itself as ‘una publicación de categoría inter­nacional’ [a publication of international standing], seeking to cultivate links to contemporary comics cultures across Europe (Illustration 12.3). While the fanzine aspired to reach European circuits and served as a vehicle to disseminate theories and methods formu­ lated abroad, Bang! remained distinctly Spanish in its allegiance to Spanish comics and artists. ‘Hemos decidido que BANG! se espe­ cialice en el tebeo y la historieta españoles, máxime cuanto que ya otras publicaciones se ocupan, con gran fortuna, de la producción extranjera’ [It has been our decision to specialise in Spanish tebeos and historietas, all the more so when other publications are con­ cerned with foreign production], declared Martín and Lara in their opening issue.64 In this respect, the curatorial role played by Martín and Lara, as well as by many of their contributors, was an attempt to activate a cultural history of the medium in Spain and to initiate 62 Antonio Martín and Antonio Lara, ‘PUNTUALIZACIONES en torno al fanzine BANG!’ [CLARIFICATIONS around the fanzine BANG!], ¡Bang! fanzine de los tebeos españoles 0 (November 1968), 3. 63 Antonio Martín and Antonio Lara, ‘Editorial’, ¡Bang! fanzine de los tebeos españoles 1 (January–March 1969), 3. 64 Antonio Martín and Antonio Lara, ‘Bang! Presentación de un nuevo fanzine’ [Bang! Presentation of a new fanzine’, ¡Bang! fanzine de los tebeos españoles 0 (No­ vember 1968), 2.

262

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

Illustration 12.3. ‘Send your subscription to Bang!, an adult publication for an adult readership’. Subscription form enclosed in issue 2 (November 1970). Reproduced with the kind permission of Antonio Martín.



The Emergence of Comics Art Scholarship in Spain 263

the construction of a canon of Spanish comics artists. Amongst the sections that formed the spine of the magazine were ‘Museo de la imagen’, ‘Museo de la historieta’ and ‘Una historieta y sus autores’. The museological disposition and the auterist methodol­ ogy were certainly common practices and techniques for elevating the cultural status of comics, their producers and their critics. A comprehensive mapping of the networks and creative alliances co­ alescing around Bang! throughout its nine-year publication run would provide an indispensable counterpoint to existing literature on Spanish comics criticism by considering the synergies and the riches of fanzine production and consumption, and by reassessing the contextual significance of fanzine culture in shaping the con­ stitution of the field.65 The cultural and intellectual dynamics and fervour present in Bang!, as well as in the popular scholarship discussed here, is ar­ guably best reflected through Raymond Williams’s concept of the ‘structure of feeling’,66 whereby new formations of thought and forms of enquiry emerge alongside dominant and residual dis­ courses. During the final decade of the dictatorship, the Spanish field of comics began to form out of a new set of critical interactions and intersections between dominant discourses grounded in press history and emerging practices informed by mass communication research, semiotics and nostalgic readings. Its constitution exceeds a simple reprise of the names of pioneering critics and the titles of a handful of publications. This chapter has sought to broaden the story of the constitution of the field in Spain by repositioning currents of comics criticism in relation to the critical and cultural contexts – both local and transnational – that helped shape it. His­ toricising the phenomenon of ‘comics’ in Spain in the late 1960s and early 1970s is important not only if one is to understand the development of a local bourgeoning scene in fruitful dialogue with international traditions of comics art scholarship, but also if one is to explore further the migration of cultural theory and the encoun­ ters of networks of scholars across Europe, which, in turn, could lead to a broader remapping of contemporaneous comics cultures in Europe. 65 For a descriptive discussion of Bang! see Juan Manuel Díaz de Guereñu, ‘Bang! (1968–1976): Un nuevo discurso crítico sobre la historieta’ [Bang! (1968–1976): A new discourse on the comic’, in Antes y después de los Mass Media: Actores y estrate­ gias comunicativas [Before and after the Mass Media: Actors and communication strategies], ed. José Angel Achón Insausti, Leyre Arrieta Alberdi and José María Imízcoz Beúnza (Madrid: Editorial Dykinson, 2016), 293–312. 66 Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 128–135.

264

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll is a Reader in Hispanic Studies at the Uni­ versity of Kent. He is the author of Spanish Horror Film (Edin­burgh University Press, 2012) and the co-editor (with Ian Olney) of The Films of Jess Franco (Wayne State University Press, 2018). He is currently working on the emergence of subcultural modes of pro­ duction, reception and consumption in Spain in the late 1960s and the early 1970s across different media (comics, magazines and al­ ternative publications) and their relation to two key moments in recent Spanish history, namely, late Francoism and the transition.

Index 1212: Las Navas de Tolosa, viii, 127–129, 134, 136–137, 139–140 1938 Press Law, 21–22, 30 1956 Order, 31, 35–36 1966 Press Law, Ley 14/1966 de Prensa e Imprenta, 31, 40–42, 129, 244–245, 96 Lágrimas, vii, 71, 73–77 Adaptation, 85, 95, 97, 129, 133, 143, 158, 203, 233 Alaska, 59, 61, 68–70, 73, 75 Almodóvar, Pedro, 68–69, 75 Altarriba, Antonio, viii, 4–8, 13–14, 17, 113–116, 123, 164, 167–169 Architectural elegy, vi, 14, 182–183, 185, 187, 189, 191, 193, 195, 197, 199–201 Arrugas, 15, 117, 143–145, 147, 158, 160–161, 165, 168–169, 178, 182, 187, 193–194, 198, 203–205, 207–209, 212, 214, 216–217, 219 Autobiographical comics, 107, 122, 166–167 Balboa, Xoán, vii, 82, 87–89, 91–92 Banda deseñada, 4, 80–81, 85–86, 96, 99 BANG!, x, 63–64, 245, 255, 258–263

BDG, 80, 86, 96 Biomythographies, 99 Book trailer, x, 223, 226–227, 233–234, 236–239, 241–242 Bruguera, 7, 20–22, 24, 26, 28–29, 31–32, 35, 39–40, 113, 156 Cano de la Iglesia, Jesús, viii, 127–130, 132–134, 136–142 Carlos Giménez, viii, 8, 38, 104–107, 122–123 Carpanta, 26, 28, 32–33 Castelao Castelao, Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao: O home, vii, 82, 87–89, 91–92 Catholic (religion), 5, 29, 43, 47, 54, 58, 61. 105, 129, 232 Censorship, v, 5, 7–8, 22–23, 29, 31–32, 37–43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53, 55, 57, 59, 62, 64, 93, 144, 248 Chapbooks, 20, 86, 89 Comics biography, biographies, 10–11, 82, 84, 89, 91, 95, 97, 99–100 Comics criticism, 16, 185, 245, 263 Comics pathographies, 204, 216 Comics research, 3–5, 10–12, 16–17

266

Index

Comics scholarship, 3, 5, 13, 16, 18, 246 Consumerism, 170, 244 Cubeiro, viii, 84, 92, 94–96 CuCo – Cuadernos de Cómic, 6, 8–9, 11, 13, 16, 39, 57, 119, 165–166 Cultural intermediaries, 16, 255, 259 Cuto: Boletín Español del Comic, x, 245, 256–257 DDT, 28–29 Díaz Pardo, viii, 82, 84, 89–92 Didactic comics, 15 Didactic pathographies, 209 Digital comics, 238, 240 Doña Tula, suegra, 26, 28–29, 36 Doña Urraca, vii, 26–28, 33–34, 36 Durán, Cristina, ix, 204–206, 212–214, 217–219 Ediciones moulinsart, 71 El arte de volar, viii, 11, 114–116, 119, 123, 164, 167–168 El Capitán Trueno, 6, 127 El Cid, 128–135, 138–142 El invierno del dibujante, viii, 117, 144, 147–148, 150–151, 155– 157, 169 El Jueves, 8, 31, 38–39, 44, 47–49, 56, 224, 226 El lenguaje de los comics, 250, 253 El Papus, vii, 8, 38–39, 41, 43–51, 53, 55–56, 224 el Rrollo, 62, 64–65, 73 El Víbora, 65, 72, 143, 182, 224 Eloy, viii, 107–109, 123, 127, 135 Environmental autobiography, 185 Eroticism, erotic content, 9, 43–46 Escobar, Josep, 26, 28–29, 33, 36 Españistán: Este país se va a la mierda, 222, 238 European Comic Art, iv, 2–3, 5, 11, 16, 18, 20 Europesadilla, 228, 231–232, 234, 236, 240

Fanzine, (zine), 7, 15, 59–68, 71–74, 245, 255–261 Fills dels 80: La generación bombolla, x, 222–223, 225, 227–229, 231, Flechas y Pelayos, 21, 23 Fraga Iribarne, Manuel, 40, 244 Francoist dictatorship, The (1936– 1975), iv, 5, 9, 11–12, 14, 59 Francoism, iv, 6–7, 10–11, 29, 37–38, 42, 56, 72, 85, 93, 99, 101, 104, 109, 119, 122–123, 243, 264 Galician comics, 4, 10, 80–82, 85–86, 96 Gallardo, Miguel, viii–ix, 15, 110– 113, 123, 158, 164, 166–167, 169, 178, 202–205, 208–211, 214–216, 219 Gasca, Luis, 182, 245–246, 248– 251, 255–259 Gender, sexuality, iv–v, 7, 29, 58–59, 61, 69, 71–72, 77–78, 149, 181 Giner Bou, Miguel Ángel, ix, 204–206, 212–214, 217–219 Graphic biography, biographies, v, 10, 80, 85, 87, 92, 96–97 Graphic medicine, 15, 203–205, 208–210, 212, 214, 219 Grupo de Cómics do Castro, 85, 89 Gubern, Román, 25, 182, 249–250, 253–255 Guijarro, Carlos, viii, 121, 123 Heritage tourism, 125 Hernández Palacios, Antonio, viii, 107–108, 123, 128–135, 138–141 Historical memory, 9–11, 14, 103–105, 113–114, 122, 146, 154–155, 163, 178 Historieta histórica, 129 Iconostasis, ix, 186, 190, 197, 199–200 Intergenerational memory, vi, 14, 163–164, 167–168, 172, 177



Index 267

Intertextuality, 13, 226, 232, 239, 241 Ja, 38, 43, 47, 53, 55–56 Judicial proceedings, 47–48, 53 Junta Asesora de la Prensa Infantil, 29 Kim, viii, 55, 66, 114–116, 123, 164, 168, 204 La Codorniz, 6 La Familia Ulises, 25, 33 La Mosca, 252, 254 La movida madrileña, 7, 58–79, La Nueve, 117, 119, 154–155 La Reconquista, 11, 125–142 Las Hermanas Gilda, 28 Ley de Memoria Histórica, Historical Memory Law 2007, 105, 114, 122 Los ‘comics’: Arte para el consumo y formas ‘pop’, Los comics, 25, 245 Los surcos del azar, viii, 11, 117–119, 123, 144, 150–151, 153–154, 156–157, 164–165, 169, 185 Manga, 1, 144–145, 150, 232 María y yo, ix, 15, 178, 203–205, 209–212, 214–215, 219 Marín, Xaquín, 81, 85 Martín, Antonio, 2, 4, 19, 21, 24, 63, 244–245, 258, 260–262 Martín, Paco, vi, 73, 82, 87, 88, Maus, 102, 109, 111, 113, 117, 123, 153, 164, 167 Mazaira, viii, 84, 92, 94–96 Medieval period, The, vi, 107, 125–136, 138, 140–142, 242 Memory work, 166, 168, 170 Middle ages, The, 11–12, 128, 142 Moix, Terenci, 24, 245, 248–249, 251–253 Morality, 22, 29, 33, 40–41, 43, 48, 55 Multimodality, multimodal extensión, 15, 223, 226–227, 241–242,

PACE (Plataforma Académica sobre el Cómic en Español), 17–18 Paracuellos, 9, 104–105, 109, 117, 122 Paseo de los canadienses, viii, 119– 121, 123 Patiño, Reimundo, 85 Por Favor, vii, 8, 38–39, 42, 44–45, 47, 49–53, 56 Post-war Spain, 23, 36 Pulgarcito, vii, 20, 22, 24, 26–28, 32–35 Ratzinger Z, 232, 236–237 Regional comics, 10, 17 Roca, Paco, vi, viii–ix, 14–15, 39, 46, 54–56, 117–119, 123, 143– 145, 147–153, 155, 157–159, 161, 164–165, 168–170, 172–180, 182–205, 207, 214, 216–219, 222 Romeu, Carlos, 39, 54–55, 224 Saló, Aleix, vi, x, 15, 221–242 Sarry, Ulises S., vii, 82, 87–89, 91–92 Satirical magazines, 38–40, 43, 47–48, 51, 56, 224 Second Republic, The (1931–1939), 122 Self-censorship, self-censure, 7, 42 Sexuality, v, 7, 44, 58–59, 61, 63, 66, 69, 71–72, 78 Simiocracia, x, 227–228, 230–236, 239–240 Siro, viii, 84, 86, 92, 94–96 Social criticism, vi, 7, 9, 15, 56, 203, 221, 223, 225, 227, 229, 231– 233, 235, 237–239, 241–242 Spanish Civil War, The (1936– 1939), 4, 10, 58, 68, 82, 92, 102–104, 107, 111–113, 117, 120–123, 126, 133, 135, 141, 163, 166, 185, 220 Spanish Transition, The (1975– 1982), v, 7, 37, 39–40, 43, 57, 104, 169

268

Index

Spanish underground comix (comics), 7–8, 13 Spiegelman, Art, 62, 102, 109, 117, 123, 144, 153, 167, 171 Star, 65, 72, 183, 232 Suárez, Inacio, viii, 84, 96–99 Suárez, Iván, viii, 84, 96–99 TBO, 20–25, 33, 35, 243 Tebeo y cultura de masas, 245, 249–251 Tebeosfera, 6, 10–11, 15, 17, 24, 32, 40–41, 81, 107, 202 Testimonial comics, 102 Therapeutic journeys, vi, 15, 202– 203, 205, 207, 209, 211, 213, 215, 217–219 Titoán, 84, 96, 99 Transnational processes, 3, 15

Trauma, 102–105, 107, 112–114, 117, 123, 166–167, 181, 218 Traumatic memory, v, 10, 101–105, 107, 109, 111, 113, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123 Un largo silencio, 11, 110–114, 119, 123, 164, 166–167, 178 Una posibilidad entre mil, ix, 204– 205, 209, 212, 214, 218–219 Vázquez, Manuel, 25–28, 35, 39, 42, 66, 144, 156, 244 YouTube, 223, 227, 232, 236, 238– 239, 241 Zipi y Zape, 26, 28, 33