Barcelona City Council's publications will soon include a new collection, "Barcelona, Memory in Comic Drawings", which will use the language of comics and the resources of graphic novels to explain historical events – primarily from the 20th century – that have been significant for the city, thus recovering the memory of Barcelona and its people through comic strips.
The series “Barcelona, Memòria en Vinyetes” [“Barcelona, Memory in Comic Drawings”] an initiative of the Councillor’s Office for Historical Memory and Barcelona City Council curated by Montserrat Terrones, makes its debut with the title by Jordi de Miguel and Susanna Martin that we are now presenting: Històries de la Model [Stories from La Model prison]. The comic will be followed by the book La vaga dels lloguers [The Tenants’ Strike] which tells in comic form about the time when thousands of working-class families refused to pay their rent in 1931 in protest against the abusive prices being charged due to the housing problem. And the third book will be an explanation of the LGBTI movement.
In these titles, the true protagonists of the protest movements that have emerged from civil society are given their own voice. In addition, using the graphic novel format helps explain to a younger audience how these social initiatives and movements made it possible to open up new paths for future generations.
Stories from La Model
The first part of the book takes the memories of August Gil Matamala, son and great-grandson of prisoners at La Model and lawyer for anti-Franco activists, to go through the prison’s history up to the early decades of the dictatorship, characterised by torture, squalor and death penalties. In the second part, the historian Anna Sallés uses her own experience in prison to describe the living conditions endured by the women she met there in 1962 having been arrested at a demonstration for the striking miners in Asturias. In the third part, the twins Josep and Maribel Ferrándiz look back on their experience, when they were still minors, of being arrested and tortured in Via Laietana and imprisoned in La Model and La Trinitat Vella in 1971. At around the time of their pardon following Franco’s death, another young man from Barcelona, Jordi, was arrested for theft. Soon after that, he would join the Coordinadora de Presos en Lluita (COPEL) association, an assembly-based movement of prisoners that would later be at the heart of some of the most spectacular riots in the prison’s history.
The texts and drawings are inspired by the style of the famous US journalist and graphic novelist Joe Sacco. The comic also includes a brief historical summary in the form of an epilogue, as well as a set of QR codes for anyone wishing to find out more about the future of La Model.
Book launch
The book launch will take place on Monday, 27 February at 6 pm in the auditorium of La Model (Carrer Entença, 155). The event, which will be chaired by Jordi Rabassa i Massons, Councillor for Democratic Memory, and Pau Gonzàlez Val, Councillor for the Eixample District, will feature the journalist Jordi de Miguel, the author of the text of the book, and its illustrator Susanna Martín, as well as the curator of the series, Montserrat Terrones. Three of the protagonists of the work – August Gil Matamala, Anna Sallés and Maribel Ferrándiz – as well as the historian César Lorenzo, who has helped put the comic into its historical context, will also take part.