Inside Countdown (ECC, 2022), carlos porta Y Exhibition of St. Julian Now 20 years old, they look back to fictionalize the before, during and after the Prestige disaster. Throughout its pages, the attitudes and development of local politicians, fishermen, the media and volunteers are described in a portrait that few leave unharmed. According to its screenwriter, carlos portaat the same time, “in fact all these fake news before fake newsWe went through this and were not aware that it would become generalized later on,” he said, adding, “Over the years, we got used to quarantine everything, but back then, you trusted. official media or so-called official”.
Having a long career in both the comics and audiovisual fields, Portela has contributed her screenplays to series such as: wolf killer, wired girls anyone velvet, advocates the use of fiction based on true events: “There are things in Spanish legislation that you can’t tell even if you knew.” The man from Vigo, twenty years later, He admits he’s still surprised at how the political class handled the Prestige disaster.. “Twenty years later, when it’s all over, there’s not the slightest clue that they’ll notice the slightest mistake. It seems to me a great arrogance not to assume under any circumstances that things are done wrong”.
This need to remember is for the cartoonist. Exhibition of St. JulianOne of the main reasons for continuing a project like Countdown. “I realized the importance of Prestige when I had the opportunity to do an autograph session there, talking to the Galicians, there were people talking to me about it with anger and bitterness, which is something I rarely see,” he recalls. Catalan writer. “I also noticed for the first time that there are a new generation of kids who have not experienced disaster in first person, who approach their parents for attention or encouragement, and I think that’s the most important part of the job. , what happened lasts,” he concludes.
A road full of difficulties
The path to progress for this comic wasn’t easy either: The first part of the work came to light in 2008, years before other comics with similar themes and sensibilities arrived. 3 days On the tragedy of the Valencia metro by Cristina Durán and Miguel Ángel Giner Bou (Astiberri, 2018), crackWritten by Guillermo Abril and Carlos Spottorno (Astiberri, 2016), it describes the situation of European borders and those who try to reach the continent by fleeing from fear or everything under the sun, Ana Penyas (Salamandra, 2021), on the impact of tourism and speculation on our coasts. “A few times I thought it wasn’t over,” admits Carlos Portela, and Sergi San Julián takes the floor and says, “I was really responsible for it taking so long, both me and my personal situation.” And he adds: “the stability that only one job gives me a posteriori it made me throw the blanket over my head and say ‘it’s out now or not’, the catalyst has been 20 years”.
In Spain, “there are people who make a living from editing, there are people who make a living from distribution, there are people who make a living from selling, but unfortunately, there are practically none,” the cartoonist says. Someone who can make a living in Spain by drawing comics or writing screenplays”.
St Julian’s osamu tezuka Y André Juillard as a reference in Countdownand emphasizes the characteristic use of Galician color Miguelanxo Prado (“Their colors are the colors of Galicia,” he says). The meticulous work only responds to an artistic intuition that he then rationalizes and is always clear about his need to prioritize the effective over the trick. “There are more than 40 characters if we do some kind of cheating. flashbacksWe exposed ourselves to people who didn’t understand what they were reading. This is how color accompanies the comic book sense, on the one hand it should give atmosphere, but it should also clarify where we are, who is who, control the spaces.”
The importance of this chromatic scale is also conveyed in the scenario that Carlos Portela has made clear. the structure of the characters would move “a series of grays from light gray to dark gray. “Black and white may be believable for superheroes, but it’s very difficult for me at this age,” he said.
Although Portela admits that “Doing something bad doesn’t make you bad. So many nuances and so many things to look at”, what happened on the shores of Galicia twenty years ago still “brings back many bad memories. The only good thing there was the wave of solidarity and the unity of people at all levels”.
“When I was little, when I went to the beach in Vigo, sometimes we would dig in the sand, we would tar, we would play with this tire, we didn’t realize it was oil coming out of the boats”, he remembers in Galician. Finally, “this is still down there. Either we do something or we won’t be able to solve it because the sea will fix things up to a point. First it was oil, now plastic”.