2023-07-05 01:08:55
Long before the comedians sat on the bench, the first pintamonas of the Transition were already risking the type by publishing hooligan and abrasive jokes. JL Martín (Barcelona, 1953), a founding member of El Jueves in 1977 and co-editor of the publication for more than 30 years since 1982, was in charge of this crew of cartoonists for a while.
Martín has just published ‘Desmemorias de una revista satírica’ (Libros Cúpula), a book in which he reviews the vicissitudes of a magazine that in its golden age reached 750,000 weekly readers, an astronomical figure for the time. Thursday rubbed shoulders with the gossip and Interviú publications, the most purchased, and was read by a diverse audience, from liberal professionals to housewives.
The weekly, which lasted 45 years on the newsstands, fell victim to the rise in the price of paper and is now only published on the Internet. If for some years the prosecutors and judges viciously persecuted the viciousness of its covers, El Jueves made unforeseen enemies with the irruption of social networks, where there is no tweeter who does not feel offended. «When the internet and networks arrive, a curious phenomenon occurs: everyone can censor you because everyone feels wronged, which changes the playing field of graphic humor. The consequence is that self-censorship has grown a lot,” says JL Martín.
a high price
Making humor in the Spain of the Transition could be very expensive. In 1977 an explosive package was sent to the building where El Papus was published and the device exploded in the hands of the concierge, causing his immediate death and extensive damage to the newsroom. The attack, claimed by Triple A, was a sign that the extreme right did not have an excess of sense of humor.
Faced with the magazines that came from late Francoism (Hermano Lobo, El Papus, Por Favor), a new batch of cartoonists struggled to break through. The idea arose in 1977, when the editor José Ilario proposed to Tom, Romeu and Martín to create a different humor magazine, a comic for adults that portrayed the social moment.
“There was euphoria and joy. A gray dictatorship had ended, we wanted to forget the ‘bunker’ and be the first to bring out the first magazine of joy and democracy. Freedom had exploded, gambling had been legalized, then the divorce came and we could finally do all those things we had envied, including absolutely free humour”, says the author.
Freedom of expression
“Now instead of judges and prosecutors we are facing thousands of offended groups”
One of the great milestones of El Jueves was represented by a cover from July 2007, in which today’s Kings could be seen having sexual relations. The judge of the National Court Juan del Olmo, at the request of the State Attorney General, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, ordered the seizure of the number, whose cover was the work of cartoonist Guillermo Torres, with a script by Manel Fontdevilla.
The decision provoked an unwanted reaction, what is called the ‘Streisand effect’, the one in which censorship becomes like a boomerang against the censor. Word spread that the police were in the magazine’s newsroom and all the television stations were present there. The magazine reaped extraordinary sales, a phenomenon that was repeated with the wedding of Kings Felipe and Letizia: “We threw out 200,000 copies and they sold out.”
syrup overdose
Fans of caustic humor thanked cartoonists for someone to distance themselves from the overdose of syrup with which the traditional press treated the monarchical institution. The other issues that raised rashes were religion and wealthy people. “Then that changed and the different powers adopted the saying ‘it’s better not to shake it’. On the other hand, now the danger is in the ‘woke’ culture and all those groups that are always willing to take great offense. Instead of judges and prosecutors, we are facing an endless number of groups wanting to kill us.
The pages of El Jueves were a granary of essential humor authors, such as Óscar, Ivà, Perich, Forges, Azagra, Fontdevila, Paco Alcázar, Darío Adanti, Ventura and Kim, among many others.
A moment that they would like to forget occurred in 2014. The ownership of the magazine censored a cover signed by Manel Fontdevila about the abdication of the King and the list of cartoonists was decimated by the resignation of collaborators and staff members. «It was a crash that almost ended the magazine. And there we were in a tris of closing. It was a catastrophe », he recalls.
#networks #censor