Paco Roca: "The drawing teacher used to say that I wasn't a great artist but that I had aptitude: he defined me perfectly"

BarcelonaThe Honorary Grand Prize of Comic Barcelona that he received last year –at only 56 years old– was the last recognition missing for Paco Roca (Valencia, 1969), the most important Spanish comic author of the 21st century, who despite his success continues to strive to offer vibrant and restless works, whether it is the journalistic comic strip the journalistic comic strip La vida en espera that he created together with Rodrigo Terrasa for the Diari del Còmic of ARA or his new long comic, El viaje (Astiberri), a story with evident autobiographical touches about a recently separated writer who is forced to spend a few days in a hotel in Patagonia when his flight is cancelled. But El viaje is not just the story of a breakup –in fact, it begins where many stories of heartbreak end, with the separation consummated–, but an immersion into the pain and emotional tribulations that follow the end of a relationship. A moving and honest work by an author in full command of his narrative faculties.

How does the journey of this comic begin?

— First of all, it's a kind of therapy. A few years ago I broke up, and without being very clear why, I started taking notes. I knew that, with time, the pain would eventually dilute, as would what I felt for that person. And while I was taking notes, I realized that around me there were a lot of people going through the same thing. Couple relationships have their evolutionary, and even economic function: it is more efficient and cheaper to live as a couple than as a single person. But it's an invention that goes against many aspects of human beings, from monogamy to identity or personal space, which always creak. And it seemed like a good topic to explore based on the relationships I've had and my breakup, but also those of friends.

A fundamental element of El viaje is memory, which I would say has become the fundamental element of his work.

— When we talk about memory, in the end, we talk about the present. Memory is built with a purpose, which is to learn. Reflecting on the past and putting it in order helps us to organize and understand the present. Learning about what has happened to reinvent ourselves, to see who we are based on who we have been. And this applies to both historical and personal memory. I wanted to reflect on all of this in the comic, to see how we manage memory in the sense that, sometimes, we also need to forget. Memory is important, but there are things that need to be put away in a drawer. Knowing where they are and that they are part of you, but forgetting them a little to be able to move forward and start anew.

It is curious that he claims the importance of forgetting after a comic that, precisely, fought for memory.

— Understanding is putting things in their place, and for that you need to create a subjective account of what has happened, with a cause-and-effect relationship that brings us to the present. It also happens with history, which is a pile of things that happen without order or cause to which we need to put a certain order. But this order, especially in the personal sphere, we modify it over time. In essence, it is not about forgetting, but about changing the narrative throughout our lives.

Reading The trip I thought of Chris Ware, with whom he shares the will to play with the language of comics to graphically translate what is happening in the protagonist's head. Does he naturally use these narrative resources or does he look for stories that lend themselves to using them?

— It is a mixture of both. I like to confront stories that, apparently, don't seem like comics in a traditional sense. Comics have evolved in parallel with cinema as an art that tells stories of people doing things. Tintin, superheroes, are people doing things. Most manga and the French industry are based on the same. But literature is not like that. There is literature about people doing things, but above all about people feeling things and reading the inner world of the characters. At this moment, I am not interested in themes about people doing things. I want to talk about the characters' feelings. And for that, we must stop using the panel as a cinematographic camera and look for other narrative resources to explore the inner life of the characters.

The protagonist ofThe Journey barely does anything during the comic, only talks to another character.

— This was the challenge. The bulk of the comic is two people talking about their things. In a novel, it wouldn't attract attention or seem like a rarity. But in the world of comics, we have the dilemma of how to make it not a story of talking heads, new resources are needed. But it is in this area where I like to work, looking for these tools, always aware that most of my readers are people who do not usually read comics. So I try to do it very clearly so as not to lose anyone along the way, and to do it only because the story demands it, not out of a mere interest in exploring.

We discover the protagonist of El viaje stranded in Patagonia, where he has gone to see the Lighthouse at the End of the World that inspired a novel by Jules Verne. But you set the story in a not particularly novelistic town, in a grey hotel out of season, and the lighthouse doesn't even appear. Why?

— I wanted the guy to be completely sunk, and for that I needed a place that was bland in every way, without any external stimulus, to force him to come into contact with his inner world. The starting point happened to me: a couple of summers ago I went to Argentina and my return flight was canceled. And the passengers who couldn't be rebooked on other flights were paid for a few days in a Buenos Aires hotel where a very curious sub-world was created among us. But Buenos Aires was not a good setting for this story, so I thought of Patagonia, which is a more isolated place, and to document myself I went there for 10 days with my daughters. At the travel agency they didn't understand me: "I want a hotel that is isolated, that is bland," I told them. And my daughters also didn't understand that, with all the beautiful hotels in El Calafate next to a beautiful lake, we were in one of the outskirts that had nothing special and was far from everything. But it's the hotel from the comic book, it's exactly like the drawing.

The journey is a comic that, deep down, is constantly asking itself: “And now what?”. Compared to his other works, this is a comic that does not try to convey any idea, but rather to formulate questions for which it has no answer.

— Yes, that's the feeling I had when I finished. I usually make comics to find answers. I have an initial idea, of course: in The Abyss of Oblivion I was logically in favor of the exhumations of the victims of Francoism, but I didn't know exactly what motivates families and I discovered all this as I was making the comic. In the end, I leave the doors open, but more or less I feel that I have unraveled the subject. In this comic, on the other hand, I haven't gotten any answers in the end, I've ended up with the same doubts I had at the beginning. In couple relationships there are too many factors at play, a component of chance and uncontrollable aspects like feelings. And the fact that I haven't found answers makes the comic have less light than my other stories, because it ends practically at the same point where it begins.

But there is a change.

— The only difference in the protagonist is that who narrates their life changes. We spend our lives narrating in our heads what we do, usually to another person or people. After a breakup, you have many dialogues in your head with the other person. You ask them what happened, why, many things. And yes, in the end the narrator begins to narrate to themselves, they no longer need to narrate so much to another person. You begin to see the end of a crisis, although it remains a bit up in the air. We know that over time they will overcome it, but the story asked me to leave it at a moment when they have not yet overcome it.

The journey is already in the process of being adapted for cinema. Are you participating in the project in any way?

— I no longer get involved in movies made from my comics. A few years ago I had a bad experience and it seemed like a waste of time to dedicate so much effort to something where, in the end, it's the producer or the director on duty who makes the decisions. I prefer to stay out of it. If the screenwriters or directors want, I love to chat and explain things to them, because in the end I have a lot of discarded material that didn't fit in the story or over time things have happened that can no longer go into the comic but can go into the movie. In any case, I don't feel like going back to a story I've already done and dedicating another two years of my life to it, I prefer to work on new projects.

How did Paco Roca's journey as a comic book artist begin? If I were to tell the story of how an electrician's son became the most important Spanish author of his generation, what would be the first scene?

— The first one would be me, at 10 years old, drawing in my room after seeing Star WarsIt's curious that from a young age he used comics to fix his memory.

It's curious that even as a child I used comics to fix my memory.

— And what is your best memory related to drawing?

And what is the best memory you have related to drawing?

— His first readers were his brothers.

His first readers were his brothers.

— Yes, I made comics for them. One of these comics was in the exhibition they held for me at Comic Barcelona, which was called The Stone Age of Paco Roca, but it also had a lot of influences from science fiction and more current things.Asterix, but I also had many influences from science fiction and more current things.

Why do you keep all this material?

— Fortunately, my mother saved it all. When I discovered it, I was very excited to see all those pages... There were things I remembered drawing, but others I didn't. And it was everything I liked at that moment, from superheroes to Verne's novels and the Juvenile Literary Jewels collection. Deep down, it's what creates you as an author and as a person, and it was all there in those drawings.

He dedicated a comic to the memory of his mother, Regreso al Edén, but she, in her own way, was also the guardian of his memory.

— Yes. It's true. I could have thrown it all in the trash, but I kept everything, even the notes I have from my private drawing classes. The teacher gave me a 5. He said I wasn't a great artist but I had aptitude: he defined me perfectly. It was more passion than a gift, and I think that can be motivating for people. If you're truly passionate, it doesn't matter if you're not a virtuoso.