An extraordinarily lively mosaic of the new Catalan comic

BarcelonaOn June 21, 2021, Vinyetari (Norma) arrived in bookstores, an anthology that collected the best comics presented at the first edition of the ARA Comic Award. Since then, neither the award promoted by this newspaper with the support of Linguistic Policy nor the volume that compiles the best works from each edition have missed the annual event. This week, Vinyetari 6 (Finestres) has arrived in bookstores, the sixth installment of a project that is offered to readers as a great mosaic and showcase of new Catalan comics and which has served for many of the authors called to renew the scene to debut.

With the 12 comics and 200 pages of this volume, there are now over 1,000 unpublished pages of Catalan comics published in the Vinyetari series, a total of 67 short non-fiction comics ranging from historical memory to autobiography, journalism, essay, and experimentation. As Marta Cartu points out in the original illustrated prologue of Vinyetari 6, comics are a banquet with many dishes and flavors, full of “living stories that touch and dialogue” and that share artistic concerns and ambitions.

The youngest winner of the Premi ARA

At just 22 years old, J. Lobo Hispano López won the latest ARA Comic Award with an incisive and vivid comic strip that reflects on his own experience of living in a tiny fifteen-square-meter studio. “It makes you a bit more humble,” the young cartoonist, who is studying his second year of a master’s degree in international governance and diplomacy in Paris, explained to ARA. In 15 square meters, the author revisits the modern city model based on utopian projects by Fourier, Le Corbusier, or Ricardo Bofill. “Designing a utopian city is a project doomed to failure, because the appeal of cities is, in part, the movement generated by the existence of a center and a periphery,” argues Hispano López, who had already entered the ARA Award in 2024 with the comic strip Tourism and Utopia. Among his projects is the publication of his first graphic novel, which he is already working on.

Around the Plain of Vic

Last summer, German illustrator Marlene Krause (Wanne-Eickel, 1984) did an artistic residency at Can Grau, an old textile factory in Osona converted into a creation center. She was able to bring her daughters, and when they went out on excursions, she discovered that the rivers were not suitable for swimming and she suffered the olfactory and auditory impact of pig farms. With a seemingly naive drawing of deep colors and precise rhythm, Krause portrays in La plana the "oppressive atmosphere" around a swamp and the complex relationship between the pig industry and the ecosystem, but she also reflects on her condition as a foreigner and that of many slaughterhouse workers. "I have a European passport and I am white and therefore privileged, but I cannot stop talking about the shit that is uncovered when you investigate the issue of pigs and water," she says. The author imbues the comic with an acidic and fine humor that she already showed in works such as Momento móvil (Apa Apa, 2019) or À un autre endroit, published in 2013 by the emblematic French publisher L’Association. By the way, pigs will reappear in her next work: a fanzine about wild boars that she is preparing with Evin Collis, author of the fanzine Litterpig.

Growing up in a Chinese restaurant

who they called Chikito Nakatone; it made my blood boil”. The drawing of Jo, xinès is his attempt to "understand the why" of those racist situations that still affect him. "The comic is a concentration of experiences, but back then racism was everywhere, even on television – he recalls–. Like that character from the show 'Un, dos, tres' they called Chikito Nakatone; it made my blood boil". The drawing in Jo, xinès is minimalist and in black and white, far from the colorful works for which many people know Pang the illustrator. "I wanted the reader to be moved by the story, not by the colors, and to strip the drawing to the bare minimum," he says. In the comic, Pang reflects on the impact of words ("xinito", "panda") on a child's consciousness, but also on the odyssey of his father, who fled communist China by swimming to Hong Kong. His story and that of his mother, who fled Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, is the subject of a comic the author has been working on for fifteen years. "In reality, it will be a comic about silence, because my family never talks about these issues," he points out.

The big lie of tarot

As explained in the prologue of Arcans, Arcans, Anna Ferrer – who signs her comics as Annadiplosis – shared an apartment with a witch. “Before moving in, she told me, she had purified the room of energies and bad vibes – she recalls. I was stunned. I wasn't interested in the esoteric at all, but I tried to open myself to her world without prejudice and she introduced me to tarot”. Curious, Ferrer began to inform herself about tarot and its origins and has ended up dedicating a well-documented and incisive comic strip to it that, with humor, investigates and debunks many of the clichés surrounding the world of tarot. “There are people who say there were hidden arcana in the pyramids and that it is an ancient tradition, but as you inform yourself you realize that, despite having a certain historical basis, it's all a lie and each source tells you radically different things – she points out. Most are historians who have one foot in esotericism, and it's very curious and fun to see what thread each one was pulling”. Ferrer, who has three participations in the Vinyetari and has published a series in ARA, is already preparing the comic strip she will present at the 2026 ARA Award.

Caldes de Montbui, center of the universe

The cartoonist Ferran Vidal, son of Caldes de Montbui, follows Dalí's maxim “the ultralocal is the most universal” and establishes himself as an incorrect chronicler of his town in a comic strip that boasts of talking only “about what you can't find on Google or Wikipedia.” That is, a portrait between the anecdote and the human bestiary that includes the freak who peed in the municipal pool through a hole in a testicle, the mailman who is “an absolute god of sudokus,” and the one who has seen Dirty dancing. “This time I wanted to escape from current news and major topics,” he assures. Vidal will publish the graphic novel "Vinyetari. “This time I wanted to move away from current news and big topics,” he assures. Vidal will publish the graphic novel Miller in February 2027 and is working with Kiko Amat on a book of illustrated biographies of cursed artists, a project that began to see the light in l’ARA.

Grandpa's workshop

is the first comic published by Gamon, who in 2011 already won the Mostra't de Gandia award with The lime tree is the first comic published by Gamon, who in 2011 already won the Mostra’t prize in Gandia with Laudanum.

Sewing at the Montjuïc shacks

While preparing a more extensive project on the historical problem of access to housing in Barcelona, which will be released early next year, Anna-Lina Mattar and Marta Sabaté gave shape to one of the real stories they discovered during their research on the shantytowns of the sixties, that of a mother who lives on the mountainside surrounded by misery and does not dare to ask for work as a seamstress. “It’s a kind of spin-off of the other comic, a small anecdote that we found fun, tender, and beautiful, perfect for adapting it to the short format of the Premi ARA,” explains Sabaté. The anecdote was told to them by Miquel Cartisano, who shares memories and facts about Barcelona on the blog Tot Barcelona. “Miquel lived in the shantytowns and has many stories to tell,” points out Mattar, who with her fragile and delicate line defends the power of small stories to talk about collective and universal memory. “Deep down, all my stories work like this,” adds the author of L’anell de la serp (2024), winner of the València graphic novel prize, who in 2024 already published the short comic Vinyetari 4 the short comic Ulla.

Poetic chronicle of a pop concert

On June 10, 2025, El Petit de Cal Eril kicked off the tour for the album Eril Eril Eril in an inflatable igloo at the Centre d’Arts Ideal in Barcelona, and Joan Codina travelled from Guissona to see that concert where, about halfway through, the igloo disappeared and a visual spectacle made the songs fly even higher. Vent, vent, vent is the comic strip that Codina drew based on that experience, a chronicle that is more poetic and experiential than informative, which seeks to translate the band's music into images, rhythms, and colors. The cartoonist, who had previously entered the Premi ARA, assures that for him Poems of Incommunication by Guillem Viladot in the comic strip Dialogues of Incommunication.

When your house is for sale

The metastases of the housing problem extend to the daily life of a couple who, shortly after renting an apartment, begin to receive visits from clients interested in buying the property. The wear and tear caused by the constant drip of intrusions into privacy and the anxiety of not knowing how long you can live in your home are the theme of The fly behind the ear, the comic strip with which the Galician Hadrián Jamardo recounts his own experience with help in the dialogues and color from fellow cartoonist Pau Esparó. “We wanted to talk about the housing drama from a more emotional point of view, trying not to be melodramatic, but conveying what you feel when you go through this experience,” says Jamardo. With a very vivid drawing that may remind one of masters of the Nouvelle BD like Sfar and Blain, the comic captures the situation with humor and empathy, but towards the end it is steeped in sadness to explain how the protagonists are expelled from the apartment and, burnt out and tired, end up separating. Jamardo recalls writing these scenes with a “feeling of rage”.

Conspiranoia, REM and pop culture

In 1994, the group REM released What’s the frequency, Kenneth?, the first single from the album Monster. Behind that song lies a well of paranoid delusions and conspiracy theories that began in 1983 with the beating that a disturbed William Tager gave to Dan Rather, the CBS anchor. Marcos Prior and Danide explore the real events and connections with pop culture of this strange and fascinating story. “I wanted to build a kind of puzzle that also touches on genres like thriller and science fiction and allowed me to talk about REM,” says Prior, who wrote the script with Danide in mind, with whom he had already collaborated on landmark works of modern Catalan auteur comics such as Fagocitosis and Potlatch. “It was hard for me to draw it, because it has a somewhat complicated tone between tragedy and humor, it has a lot of black humor and this critique of United States culture and the media that is very characteristic of Marcos,” says Danide, who alternates a hyperrealistic style for television textures and psychedelic experiments for Tager's fantastic delusions.

Activism with tooth and nail

When a friend of Feliciano García Zecchin announced on social media that she was going to Egypt to demonstrate against the genocide in Gaza, curiosity was awakened in the Argentine cartoonist based in Montseny. What motivates a person to leave everything to go to a distant country to be part of a demonstration prohibited by the government? A trip full of risks and which, at times, seems like a spy mission, full of lies and subterfuges to evade the authorities. "I stayed to talk to her and I realized it was a good story, especially because she has Jewish ancestry, and that brought credibility to the project," says García Zecchin, who in his youth had "a bad experience" in trench activism and "putting his own body on the line", but who through 70, 230 and Manolo García estem bé has been able to talk about a personal and collective "feeling of powerlessness". A particularly effective detail of the comic is the chromatic palette of red, green, white, and black, the colors of the Palestinian flag. "It was a decision somewhat due to the little time I had to do the coloring, but for a long time now I've liked to simplify things and break away from realistic drawing," he explains.

Living in fear of war

“The fear of war has accompanied me my whole life”. It is the first sentence ofEsperant els bàrbars, and the confession made by the author, Pol Guillen, for whom a trip to Bosnia at the end of the Balkan conflict marked him forever as a young man. “I was very impressed by the everydayness with which the war was lived, and there I realized that there were no good guys or bad guys,” recalls Guillen, who, although he was tempted to dedicate the comic strip to his experience in Bosnia, preferred to articulate a kind of first-person essay on the strange relationship we have today with war, from a fragile sense of distance and security that can be shattered at any moment. “I am not a philosopher, but I like political philosophy and I wanted to do a very personal reflection on the warmongering that dominates current society,” explains Guillen, whose interest in dialoguing with the world through drawing comes from his family: his father is Joan Guillen, a set designer and satirical illustrator who did graphic humor in 70s magazines such as Tele/eXpres and Por Favor. The son will soon debut in long-form comics with La veu del poble, an adaptation of Ibsen's play L’enemic del poble which Guillen sets in Empordà in the early 20th century, when the Mancomunitat created the Costa Brava brand.