My City – Danger Room –

I have something to confess to you. I am from the village. It’s all a condition. And even though I haven’t practiced it in 20 years, deep down I still do. And pride. I’m not lying when I say it’s part of who I am.

You might be wondering what this is about and what it has to do with the comic. well you will see Like many of you, I grew up reading comics in very cheap and shoddy publications, the kind bought at newsstands. My dad bought them for me. They were from Ediciones B, not Bruguera, and I came here to have a good collection.

By far, my favorites were Zippi and Zape. Don Pantuflo’s slippers and mouse room are as intense a memory as the petazeta and nutella sandwiches. So imagine one day when I was reading a new Zipi y Zape comic in a somewhat special edition containing old material, when a comic starring Escobar came out, a comic in itself that at one point referred to the Granollers. hometown where he claims to live. I couldn’t believe it! My idol lived in my city!

Other famous people like Barça actors and models, national politicians, long-haired television friends, television presenters and film, theater and television actors have shared my hometown, but nothing compares to sharing with Josep Escobar. Not going anymore!

Years later, years later, I discovered that wasn’t quite the case. Josep Escobar was born in Barcelona and spent most of his childhood at Granollers, where he started working as a postman and became manager of the municipal post office. During his time there during the Second Republic, he was actively involved in the civil society of the period and was published in various magazines both in Granollers and in Barcelona. In the city he returned to before the civil war, he continued his career as a cartoonist as the number of commissions he received increased. The war got him politicized, he was a member of the Cartoonists Guild, and when that was over, he found his bones in jail for his political activities.

His time on the model includes caricature drawings that he made to soothe both his own grief and the grief of his friends. And little was known about his political affiliation, because when he left prison, like many other Spaniards, he was plunged into a long silence about anything related to a past that might cause him trouble. But both the comics and the character of Carpanta are born of Escobar, the sharpest depiction of the post-war misery and hunger.

After many years Josep Escobar returned to Vallés Oriental, if not Granollers, and settled in the neighboring municipality of Santa Eulàlia de Roncana until his death in 1994. Although he was alive as a child, I did not meet him on the street once, at the pre-Olympic Granollers, although still small and quite rural.

Even today, it saddens the relatively little recognition that Granollers bestows on one of its most famous residents. There’s been the Josep Escobar Comics Award for a few years now, and I don’t know if it’s still collected and named after a secondary street on the edge of neighboring Canovelles. Why isn’t one of the public schools in Granollers named after him? Or a town hall or a library? Since everyone of a certain age has read Zipi y Zape, Carpanta, Petra or Tobby, no one has ever existed more universally in Granollers than him.

This week that Miguel Gallardo passed away got me thinking about the huge debt of public and corporate recognition we owe so many of our comic book writers.† Not only because they bring us pleasure, but also because they are our legacy and part of our collective memory that they have created.

For all this, besides saying I’m proud to be out of town, I can say that I am proud to be from my own city.