Sergio Andreu |
Barcelona (EFE).- Possibly, “Interviú” and “El Jueves” are the two most important magazines of the Spanish transition and democracy, although only the satirical title is still alive, 46 years after which José Luis Martín, “father founder” of the bible of contemporary humor, dedicates some very revealing “forgetfulness”.
Intrastory of a social phenomenon, with close to 750,000 weekly readers at its sweetest moments, astronomical figures that are difficult to understand today, when most young people and many adults do not even touch the paper of a newspaper or a magazine with a stick.
Martín (Barcelona, 1953), creator of mythical characters -Quico el progre- receives EFE in his studio full of photos, drawings and other paraphernalia that surround the daily life of the cartoonist, active thanks to the cartoons he publishes in La Vanguardia.
“DesMemorias de una revista satírica” (Cúpula) covers the years that he was in charge of the publication, originally weekly, from 1977 until his departure in 2016, a gradual abandonment, aware that the generational barrier of, let’s call it, new humor (“Video game cartoons!!!”) placed him in an alien orbit.
“I have always lived with the very pleasant feeling that we were contributing to happiness, for a few minutes a week, of course, but to the happiness of many people and this seems to me to give meaning to our work”, Martín proudly affirms.
The pandemic and the confinement encouraged the cartoonist to offer his vision of this magazine that was born independent, which passed into the hands of powerful editorial groups (Zeta, RBA), which lived through the peak and decline of publications, and which has been the haunt of essential firms humor, such as Óscar, Ivà, Perich, Forges, Azagra, Fontdevila, Paco Alcázar, Darío Adanti, Ventura, Kim…
“On Thursday” came to change the point of view of humor
The proposal arose in 1977 from the editor José Hilario to Tom, Romeu and Martín, to create a different humor magazine, “fresh, that was a Thumb for adults”.
“The magazines that existed, with the exception of “El Papus”, which were more brutish than us, were all already a little orderly. I always say that “El Jueves” was the first magazine of the Transition, the others (“Hermano Lobo”, “Por favor”…) were late Francoism, magnificent but very political, very much in the fight against the dictatorship”, he sums up.
The first issue was published in Barcelona fifteen days before the first elections, with a vision that fled from the ideological trenches to make a more thug humor, a “master formula” that combined current affairs and characters.
“We didn’t think much about censorship, we were very young or very irresponsible. We knew that we touched what we touched, everything was susceptible to the press prosecutor calling us”, recalls the cartoonist.
The surprise departure of the Zeta group led the creative team to keep the title and go through some difficult years, which started in 1988, a “popularity boom, when suddenly everyone was reading “El Jueves”.
The arrival of Aznar in power was a shock for the magazine
After the Olympic splendors, Spain suffers another crisis, which costs them “many copies”, and which would have a surprising savior, the arrival of José María Aznar to power in 1996.
“We get the fat because Aznar, as a politician, is a very, very, very, very humorous character, let’s say, and we also gave him a lot of cane”, reveals the founder of the magazine, who knew how to channel, before social networks , the social unrest over the Iraq War.
The authors of “El Jueves” liked to play with fire, and humor about the Royal House was not an easy road to travel at that time, in the late nineties.
But, as the scorpion told the frog, they couldn’t help it, and the magazine achieved some of its milestones with covers dedicated to the monarchy, such as the issue featuring the royal wedding of Prince Philip, which sold 200,000 copies and included a t-shirt”.
A loyal audience that proved it when the magazine was seized by court order after a complaint about a bawdy cover dedicated precisely to the Prince and Princess of Asturias in July 2007, with some readers who came to demonstrate in solidarity in Madrid.
“We lived through it all very excited, very angry, a brutal alteration of our modus vivendi” recalls the former editor, who is ironic about how quickly the justice system acted to take them to the National Court.
Earthquake in the newsroom
But if Martín remains with the affection of the readers after the kidnapping, years later, another number dedicated to the abdication of Juan Carlos I, whose cover (the work of Manel Fontdevila) was replaced by the publishing company, caused an earthquake in the newsroom, with the resignation of many of its firms, which endangered the continuity of “El Jueves”.
Martín believes that humor and satire are being relentlessly affected by social networks. The cause? A dangerous self-censorship to avoid problems of “offense”, both from the right and, more evident now, from the left.
“Everyone believes they have the right to feel offended, and this, inevitably, coerces, curtails the freedom of the author, who must think ‘be careful that if I do this I don’t get into a garden with such a group.’ We didn’t have that feeling in ‘El Jueves”, indicates Martín.
“If we thought it was funny, we published it. That we were ever wrong? We accepted it. That thing about the limits of humor… Well, sometimes you go too far, well, bad luck. Everything was part of a pact between the readers and the cartoonists. Of course, our criticism was against the powerful and not against the weak ”, ditch.
The entry JL Martín, founder of “El Jueves”: “We have contributed to happiness” was first published in EFE Noticias.