ARA Comic Award for an essay by a 22-year-old author on the housing crisis
J. Lobo Hispano López wins the €10,000 prize in the Catalan non-fiction comic competition with '15 square meters'
Barcelona"It's important to have stories from young voices about our crises," J. Lobo Hispano López astutely points out. in the interview we published with the new winner of the ARA Comic Award in CatalàThis twenty-two-year-old boy, "born and raised in the Gràcia neighborhood" and who studies international relations in Paris, has won the 10,000 euros of the sixth edition of the short non-fiction comic strip competition organized by the newspaper ARA with the support of the Department of Linguistic Policy of the Generalitat of Catalonia.
15 square metersThe comic strip he submitted to the competition reflects on the current housing crisis, stemming from his experience of living in a tiny studio apartment of just 15 square meters. But Hispano López doesn't simply recount his personal circumstances; he also intertwines them with a critical review of the modern city model. The ideas of Charles Fourier, Le Corbusier, and Ricardo Bofill's utopian project—Les Espaces de Abraxas, on the outskirts of Paris—serve to articulate the author's analysis, punctuated by erudite quotations, anecdotes, and insightful observations that give shape to an essay.
Hispano López is by far the youngest winner in the history of the ARA Comic Award, which in previous editions had been awarded to... Pep Brocal, Luis Pérez Ortiz, Glafira Smith, Susanna Martín and the tandem formed by Ed Carosia and Lucas SilvestreLast year, the author of 15 square meters He already entered the competition with the comic strip Tourism and utopia, which, despite not winning, was one of the works selected for the anthology of the best comics of the fifth edition, Vignette 5 (Windows, 2025). Those ten pages were his first comic published and distributed in bookstores, the official debut of an author who, therefore, was born professionally with the ARA Comic Award and the VineyardWith his win of the ARA Comic Award, Hispano López presents his credentials as a voice of the future of Catalan comics.
Hispano López, born in Barcelona in 2003, earned a degree in global studies from Pompeu Fabra University, is currently in his second year of a master's program in international governance in Paris, and has just completed an internship at UNESCO focused on cultural diplomacy. Despite having studied some courses at theJoso SchoolShe champions social media—and especially X—as her primary drawing school and copying as her main learning tool. She is currently continuing her studies in Paris while preparing her first graphic novel.
The announcement of the ARA Prize winner was made at the Ateneu Barcelonès in an event presented by Glàfira Smith, winner of the 2023 ARA Comic Prize. The works to be published alongside the prize were also presented at the event. 15 meters to Panel 6, the compilation of the best non-fiction comics from the ARA Comic Award, which will be published by Ventanas in the spring of 2026. The volume will consist of the comics What is the frequency?, by Marcos Prior and Danide; The page, by Marlene Krause; The fly behind the ear, by Hadrian Jamardo and Pau Esparó; The lemon, by Jordi Gamón; A little (not much) of humanity, by Ferran Vidal; Can Valero, by Anna-Lina Mattar and Marta Sabaté; Arcana Arcana, from Annadiplosis, 70, 230 and Manolo García are doing well, by Feliciano García Zecchin, Waiting for the barbarians, by Pol Guillen; I, Chineseby Miguel Pang; and Wind wind wind, by Joan Codina.The cover, as stipulated in the rules, will be the work of the winning author, J. Lobo Hispano López.
Nearly 1,000 pages of comics in Catalan
"The standardization of the language is a task we can only accomplish together, and it must be a cross-cutting effort," stated the Minister of Language Policy, Francesc Xavier Vila. "Comics allow us to access a world of their own, different from written texts, and to see that Catalan is a language that can be drawn and that encompasses all registers. Awarding a comic like this 15 meters"It offers rigorous reflection on the problems that affect us as a society and is also a way of understanding language as a creative, living, and shared space," he added.
The deputy director of the ARA, Ignasi Aragay, noted in his remarks that when the next issue is published... VineyardThe six volumes of the anthology will have collected a total of 68 comics submitted to the prize, "amounting to nearly a thousand pages of Catalan comics that would not exist without the authors' trust in the ARA Prize and the commitment of the regional government and the collaborating publishers." Aragay celebrated that There is "a new generation of authors aware that there is room for comics in Catalan, thanks to the ARA Prize and other initiatives" but he points out that the publishing ecosystem of comics in Catalan "is still very fragile and small, and it needs to be watered and nourished."