From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth Miranda-Barreiro, David
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth ANGOR UNIVERSITY Miranda-Barreiro, David European Comic Art DOI: 10.3167/eca.2018.110105 PRIFYSGOL BANGOR / B Published: 01/03/2018 Peer reviewed version Cyswllt i'r cyhoeddiad / Link to publication Dyfyniad o'r fersiwn a gyhoeddwyd / Citation for published version (APA): Miranda-Barreiro, D. (2018). From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth: Castelao in Galician Graphic Biography. European Comic Art, 11(1), 66-86. https://doi.org/10.3167/eca.2018.110105 Hawliau Cyffredinol / General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. 28. Sep. 2021 From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth: Castelao in Galician Graphic Biography David Miranda-Barreiro Abstract The multifaceted Galician artist, writer and politician Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao (1886-1950) has been considered a pioneer of Galician comics or banda deseñada due to his key role in the development of the medium, from his early comic strips in the magazine Vida Gallega [Galician Life] (1909), to the cartoons he published in the press in the 1920s and 1930s. Furthermore, Castelao has also become a comics character in a number of graphic biographies since the end of the 1970s, which the article will examine, not only addressing the reasons for the recurrent presence of Castelao in Galician comics but also how they have contributed to the process of mythologisation of this important figure of Galician culture. In aesthetic terms, it will reveal the similarities between adaptation, biography and comics when analysing them as networks. Keywords: Castelao, Galicia, graphic biography, banda deseñada, ‘biomythography’, adaptation. Introduction In one of the first academic studies on Galician comics, Germán Hermida suggested that banda deseñada1 was ‘a punto de estourar’ [about to explode] in 2005, referring to how the medium was gathering momentum in Galicia.2 This feeling was confirmed in 2010 by Isabel Mociño González, who pointed out that BDG ‘está a experimentar unha forte consolidación’ [is undergoing considerable consolidation] owing to ‘o aumento considerábel da produción (especialmente de álbums) e o prestixio e galardóns que os ilustradores galegos teñen acadado dentro e fóra de Galicia’ [an important increase in its production (especially albums) and the prestige and awards that Galician artists have received both in Galicia and beyond] as well as the creation of new publishing houses, magazines and institutional comics awards.3 However, this significance has not been paralleled by a similar academic interest, as Xulio Carballo states in his 2015 PhD thesis, the first one devoted to Galician comics.4 Before Carballo’s work, the special 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 1984,6 and by Xosé Luis Axeitos and Xavier Seoane in 1993.7 More recently, the online journal Tebeosfera has devoted a special issue to the artist Xaquín Marín.8 Comics specialists such as Breixo Hardinguey9 and Anxo 1 Banda deseñada, 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 article, I will also use the shortened version BDG. 2 Germán Hermida, ‘BD 2005: Apuntamentos e dirección’, Boletín Galego de Literatura 35 (2006), 69. 3 Isabel Mociño González, ‘Galicia dende a banda deseñada: unha modalidade literaria en expansión’, Mundu bat begirada anitz /Un mundo muchas miradas 2 (2010), 79. 4 Xulio Carballo Dopico, Para unha historia da Banda Deseñada Galega: a narración a través da linguaxe gráfico-textual, Universidade da Coruña, 2015 (PhD thesis), 3. In spite of being an unpublished PhD thesis, due to the great amount of ground it covers and its detailed approach, in my opinion Carballo’s work has already become a key reference for Galician comics studies, and will be abundantly quoted in this article. 5 Boletín Galego de Literatura 35 (2006). 6 Agustín Fernández Paz, Para lermos comics (Santiago de Compostela: Xunta de Galicia, 1984). 7 Luis Axeitos and Xavier Seoane, O cómic en Galicia (A Coruña: Deputación Provincial de A Coruña, 1993). 8 ‘Xaquín Marín’, ed. Félix Caballero, Tebeosfera 4 (2017). <https://revista.tebeosfera.com/sumario/4/> Rabuñal10 have also published their work in cultural magazines. Another source of publications on banda deseñada has been exhibition catalogues,11 and the website devoted to comics created by the Consello da Cultura Galega [Galician Culture Council] in 2001.12 This article aims to contribute to the development of Comics Studies within Galician Cultural Studies, following the work previously undertaken by the aforementioned academics and specialists. It will do so by looking at the representation of Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao’s life (1886–1950) in Galician comics. One of the founding fathers 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 conferred upon him in Galicia. Literary scholar Ricardo Carvalho Calero argues in a rather hagiographical 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, and beatification].13 As also stated by Carvalho Calero, Castelao first captured the attention of the Galician people as a graphic artist and through his use of humour and satire to denounce social injustice 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 (Figure 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 (Figure 2). Furthermore, Castelao achieved international recognition with his álbums (in this case meaning collections of prints) about the Spanish Civil War: Galicia mártir [Martyr Galicia] (Valencia, 1937), Atila en Galicia [Attila in Galicia] (Valencia, 1937) and Milicianos [Militiamen, referring to the Republican army] (New York, 1938).15 In this article, I will analyse comics biographies of this artist since the 1970s to the present day: from the first (and shorter) graphic renditions of his life by Paco Martín, Ulises S. Sarry and X. Balboa (1975),16 to Isaac Díaz Pardo’s treatment (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 contributed to the process of 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’, 9 Breixo Hardinguey, ‘Breve apunte para unha historia do cómic galego’, Consello da Cultura Galega (1999) (available online: <http://culturagalega.org/bd/documentos/breve_apunte_futura_historia_comic_galego_breixo_harguindey.pdf>). 10 Anxo Rabuñal, ‘Do Cómic á BD, pasando pola historieta’, Renova Galicia 3 (2007), 51-55. 11 ‘La historieta gallega’ (Madrid, 2006); ‘10 anos de BD galega’ (itinerant exhibition, 2007); ‘Historieta Galega 1973-2008’ (Santiago de Compostela, 2008); ‘Galicia. Tempo de BD’ (Barcelona, 2009); ‘Galicia 2009. Tempo de BD’ (Angoulême, 2009); ‘BDG70. A revolta do comic galego’ (A Coruña, 2016-2017). 12 <http://www.culturagalega.org/bd/> 13 Ricardo Carvalho Calero, Escritos sobre Castelao (Santiago de Compostela: Sotelo Blanco 1989), 11. 14 Carvalho Calero, Escritos, 15. 15 They can be seen online on the Museo de Pontevedra ’s website: <http://www.museo.depo.es/coleccion/catalogo.castelao/es.03110000.html> 16 Paco Martín, Ulises S. Sarry and X. Balboa, ‘Castelao: o home’, ‘Axóuxere’ supplement of La Región 11, January 1975. 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 (Santiago de Compostela: Demo Editorial, 2012); Titoán (Santiago de Compostela: Demo Editorial, 2012); Máis alá (Santiago de Compostela: Demo Editorial, 2013), Atila (Santiago de Compostela: Demo Editorial, 2015). despite ‘the large volume of biographical comics in existence’.20 Literary