Last year, 11.3% of the books sold for Sant Jordi were comics. Graphic novels, children's comics, classics, comics journalism, literary adaptations... the offering is numerous and diverse. And if we narrow it down to Catalan comics, there are more and more: the variety of proposals and genres is unstoppable. The festival is one of the best moments of the year to stop by a bookstore and check it out.

The Catalan comic book edition continues in an expansive phaseJournalist and comics expert Vicent Sanchis, director of TV3, is behind the creation of the new Catalan-language manga imprint Catway, which aims to normalize the presence of comics in Catalan. "The publishers that release the most manga in Catalan are Norma and Planeta, but they are always series that have already been released in Spanish, and sometimes with less quality," says Sanchis, who at Catway doesn't rule out publishing manga in Spanish as well. "But it will always be published first in Catalan," he assures.

Catalan continues to make inroads in comic book publishers' catalogs, with a diversity of genres and styles that seemed unimaginable a decade ago. Graphic novels, non-fiction, children's comics, graphic experiments, and literary adaptations represent a varied offering with options for all ages.

J. Lobo Hispano López (Barcelona, ​​2003) was born and raised in the Gràcia neighborhood, where in recent years he has witnessed the disintegration of "the entire neighborhood life." The impact of tourism and the housing crisis are the recurring themes in his short but already remarkable work as a comic book author: first, the comic strip. Tourism and utopia, included in Vignette 5 (Windows, 2025), and now 15 square meters, the brand-new winner of the ARA Prize for Catalan Comics 2025, which readers will be able to read in early 2026 in Panel 6

"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.

As is the case with so many comic book fans, at the beginning of Pau Valls' (Alcoy, 1985) love story with comics there is a mother buying her son one Mortadelo"He went to the newsstand, brought me a comic, and that's how it all started," recalls the Valencian cartoonist, who after self-publishing fanzines and short comics like Bigfoot –also published in France– finally makes his debut in long-form comics with The date (Windows), an absurd comedy dressed up as thriller A crime story about two seemingly antagonistic characters (a school janitor and a mobster's driver) brought together by an accident that intertwines their destinies.

Sant Jordi is a good indicator to measure how far it goes the push of comics in Catalan in recent yearsIn 2024, comics represented 7% of Total sales of books in Catalan for Sant Jordi, an increase of almost two percentage points compared to the previous year's figures (5.2%). And the sales growth coincides with an increasingly diverse and varied offering in terms of genres and styles. ARA has selected twenty new releases from recent months, including children's comics, journalistic comics, humor, manga, adventure, and autobiography.

For a few years now, the offer of comics in Catalan has not stopped growing in quantity, quality and diversity: manga, classics, graphic novels, children's comics, non-fiction... In view of Sant Jordi, we propose a selection of twenty recent novelties that range from the latest Mortadelo from Ibáñez to the latest British comic sensation, Zoe Thorogood, passing through masterpieces by comic geniuses such as Osamu Tezuka and Alan Moore.

Glàfira Smith (Andrea Ferrando, Barcelona, ​​​​1973) worked as a director at Mediapro, directing series such as Veterinarians, documentaries such as The sewers of the Interior and international museum projects when he saw the announcement of the ARA comic contest in 2020, and decided to give it a try. The following year it received an honorable mention and in the third edition in was the brand new winnerThe impulse was so strong that she decided to hang up her cables and throw herself into the adventure of becoming an illustrator. She has just published her first graphic novel, a moving story about the relationship between a man and his dog, Truffle (Pagès Editors). One of the 15 best comics of 2024"I've gone from leading a team of more than 100 people to running my small project alone. I've heard a sense of terror about taking the plunge, but at the same time, it was a vital necessity, because time is running out now; it's now or never," Smith explains.

On Friday, April 4th, comics will once again spread across the pages of ARA. Coinciding with the start of Comic Barcelona, ​​​​the sector's major fair, the Diari del Còmic returns, a special edition in which all the news will be illustrated by cartoonists. The initiative, which ARA has already promoted in previous years, reinvents current events with the help of a roster of cartoonists who will contribute their perspective on the news; it will, of course, be a collector's edition, an ARA by author (of authors) to keep and frame.