Berta Cusó: "It is important to laugh and take off the mask of functional adults"

BarcelonaIn 2020, an as yet unknown Berta Cusó (Barcelona, 1989) was a finalist for the Premi ARA de Còmic. She felt no sadness for not having won, but rather excitement for a career that was just beginning with that short comic strip (Paral·lel) and which has already added two magnificent full-length comics: La conca dels àngels (Pagès, 2025), which has just won the first edition of the Vinyeta Ficomic prize, and the recent L’extraordinària història del Circ Cric (Andana, 2026), the València graphic novel prize.

Her career is marked by awards.

— They have had a very big impact, especially because the Premi ARA de Còmic and València have allowed me to concentrate on doing my own projects. The Vinyeta award is different, because it is an award for published work and I already had a publisher behind me, but it still helps a lot, it's a great boost for the book to be known and to give it value.

In 2007 she was the student with the highest grade in the selectivity exams and then she studied architecture, but she has ended up dedicating herself to comics and illustration. How has her path to drawing been?

— Drawing had pleased me greatly since I was little and I never stopped. When I was studying architecture and even when I was working as an architect, I always drew in my free time. And a moment came when I realized that this was what I had to do with my life. If when you get home instead of looking at architecture blogs and magazines you start drawing, it's very clear where you want to go. I was also very attracted to telling stories, so in 2020 I left my job as an architect and, since I had time, I started making a comic and submitted it to the Premi ARA.

And has he abandoned architecture?

— Yes. In the early years I still did some work as a freelance for monument conservation, helping to measure old castles and things like that, but now I only dedicate myself to illustrating, making comics, teaching drawing classes at the Open University of Catalonia and giving drawing workshops in Berlin.

The comic made for the ARA Award, Paral·lel, originated from the memories of his great-uncle. What is the inspiration for the stories of women and wars in La conca dels àngels?

— Undoubtedly, living in Berlin, a city steeped in history where World War II is very present and where many Syrian and Ukrainian refugees have arrived in recent years. But it also comes from conversations with my editor, Jaume Borrull. He wanted to adapt a novel, but after discussing the themes that interested us, the female gaze and war experiences, I started reading many books and testimonies and realized that I was interested in pulling this thread.

Why does it focus on the female gaze on war?

— In a war everyone suffers, but the stories that are most often told in films or novels are often war narratives from the front lines, where there is a greater presence of men. I wanted to shed some light on the suffering of women during the war, which is less known, even though many lived through very extreme situations.

How much fiction and how much reality is there in what he/she explains?

— Everything is inspired by real facts and experiences of women, but I joined testimonies from various women into a single character. There are real anecdotes that do not correspond exactly to the same person, and also some fictional elements that allow me to link the stories.

I was fascinated by the protagonists of one of the stories, a Russian regiment of female aviators whom the Nazis called Night Witches.

— This is one hundred percent true. The Russian army recruited women and, although at first they weren't allowed to pilot, they eventually succeeded. They had a very good female pilot who trained them, and one of the regiments specialized in night bombing: they flew at night in special planes that weren't even war planes and kept the Nazis on their toes. There's a video on YouTube of one of the female pilots explaining anecdotes, and it's incredible.

The common element of all the stories is the Berlin pond that gives the comic its title.

— It is a pond that has a small park around it, and what interests me is that it has many layers of history. It had been a canal for transport between the Spree and the Berlin Canal, and when they closed it, the pond remained. In World War II it was bombed and a ruined church remained as a witness. During the time of the Wall, the entire pond was closed off on both sides and it was called the death strip. After the fall of the Wall, the public space was rebuilt with the current pond and a garden area, but stones from the wall remain as vestiges.

What led her to explain the story of Tortell Poltrona and the Circ Cric afterwards?

— When I was little, they took me to the circus quite often and I have many good memories of it. As an adult, I've also been there a few times, and since I have nieces, we go almost every year. Besides, my father was a theatre actor and a distant relative of Tortell. I started reading interviews of theirs, and it seemed incredible to me what these people had done since the end of the dictatorship. What they do goes against common sense: it seems impossible to establish your own life model in this capitalist world full of wars. I find it so beautiful and admirable that I wanted to explain it. First I thought about submitting the project to the ARA Award, but I soon realized that 14 pages wouldn't be enough, that it had to be a long book. So I started developing the story and submitting it to awards, until it won the València award.

Tortell Poltrona and the Circ Cric team have participated in the comic?

— They have helped me a lot. I have spoken with everyone, especially with Montse, Tortell's wife, who is also the circus clown. Before starting the project, I did a lot of research with interviews: there are a thousand of them on TV3 and in the newspapers. And when I already had thestoryboard I got in touch with them and they gave me their approval.

There is a great graphic contrast compared to La conca dels àngels, which was darker and the use of color was limited to two tones. In L’extraordinària història del Circ Cric there is an explosion of colors and narrative solutions that denotes a playful mood that fits the theme.

— Yes, I wanted to play and try things out, not get bored, and be a little freer. I had a paper in my office with a series of guidelines, so I wouldn't lose track, and the first is the question the book asks itself: how can this absurd thing of having an alternative life model in this world be made real. I was also clear that the comic had to be brought closer to the circus. Obviously, they are two different languages, but in the circus, especially at Circ Cric, visual poetry is very important, so I wanted to challenge common sense with moments of surprise. And I jotted down a phrase from Tortell: “We are just passing through and have the possibility to be happy”, which is the spirit of the book.

One of the most surprising decisions is that the narrator is invisible: the flea Orzowei.

— Being invisible forces you to leave the world of reality and enter the world of the circus. It's a pact of fiction that you have to make with this universe, just like the one you make when you go to the circus and believe in the flea. At first, the narrator was Tortell, but I wanted it to be a more collective book. I didn't want to write a biography, but to talk about the construction of the circus.

What is the most extraordinary thing about the history of Circ Cric?

— The bravery and resilience that Jaume and Montse and the people who have accompanied them all these years have shown. And how important it is to make children laugh, but also adults. It is important to sit together, laugh, and take off the mask of functional adults. We must allow ourselves to be in contact with our sensitivity and connect with others. Great bravery and strength are needed to move forward with a project like Circ Cric, which did not work out for them and they had to start again. This seems to contrast with the vulnerability of the clown and making people laugh, which seems like a very volatile thing, but in reality one thing goes with the other: they are so strong precisely because they do this work.

In fact, Tortell Poltrona's political dimension is very important in the comic, both for his humanitarian work and for the reflection on the social role of the clown.

— Because this is where the value of it all lies and the reason why I am so interested in telling this story. I don't add the political discourse, it is inherent in them from the beginning. Everything they do is political, from performing street theatre in Catalan since the end of the dictatorship to traveling to war zones. Their position is one of resistance.

Until now you have been able to make all your comics in Catalan, a freedom that comic authors do not usually have. Have you had to fight much for it to be this way?

— I think I was lucky to arrive at a time when comics in Catalan were starting to move and grow. If I had started five or ten years earlier, perhaps I wouldn't have been able to, because the awards, the market, or the publishing houses that are starting to exist now and that I hope will continue to grow were not there. I write in Catalan because that's how I think, it would be very difficult for me to write in another language. And, therefore, the paths I have sought to make comics were already focused on being able to do so. Furthermore, I live in Berlin, but I miss it a lot, and making comics in Catalan is a way of being in contact with my land.