A powerful message

I first saw this cartoon by Pepe Medina on JimenaPulse. Titled Vida regalada, ‘A gifted life’, its simplicity carries a powerful seasonal message as does all of Medina’s work for Público, in print and online. It’s well worth having a look at for it makes you think. That is the job of cartoonists everywhere, to make us think. And a heck of a job it is: a distillation of feeling, requiring a sense of humour, a deft hand probably backed by years at art school, and a secret ingredient I have never been able to fathom but before which I stand, hat doffed, in awe and admiration.

Cartooning goes back to pre-history, or what else are those cave paintings Spain is full of? Indeed, the tradition of cartoons in this country is alive and well. Every newspaper and website of any consideration is crammed with excellent work. The work of Forges published in El País is a good example, although a good knowledge of colloquial Spanish may be needed. Of course, he’s been around since forever. So has Antonio Mingote, who is also a poet and a member of the Real Academia.

Why are there so many good cartoonists in Spain? I don’t doubt for a minute there are just as many and just as good anywhere else, but I happen to live here. The rhetorical answers to my question, only opinions, are that 40 years of dictatorship forces one to read between the lines and thus refines not only a sense of healthy skepticism but also one of irony. (As a young man under a dictatorship in another country I used to buy several different daily papers to get as balanced a view as possible, but I often found that the cartoonists, often persecuted, had done that for me already.)

The other answer is that there is also a healthy comics-publishing industry, perhaps the best example of which is El Jueves, a distant Spanish cousin of the old Private Eye. These publications are a wonderful training ground for anyone who breaks out into the perilous world of the freelance. Alas, however, too many of these are unlikely to make a living from their cartoons. A more regional example of this is Ricardo Tejeiro, who publishes in Europa Sur. Ricardo is also a writer and a psychologist, which last may well account for his acuteness on issues that are mostly local rather than national or international. There are so many of them, all of them good, that there is no room here to name each one. How I wish that were possible. But long may they all last. And long may they keep bringing us their powerful messages.

(c) Alexander Bewick 2009