Paco Roca is busy. On top of his studio desk in Valencia, we find sketches for his latest project: a journalistic comic about the regularization of immigrants, which will be published this Friday by ARA, in an already traditional illustrated newspaper coinciding with Comic Barcelona. Precisely, Roca will visit the multitudinous fair on Thursday to inaugurate an exhibition about his work, one year after receiving the Gran Premi del Cómic. Asked what he believes justifies an ever-growing list of recognitions, Roca speculates about his legacy: having built with other authors "a bridge between the world of comics and the general reader." Roca assures that most of his readers do not usually read comics, and that it is more important to have entered neighborhood bookstores than to have exhibited in museums. Prestige and commercial success have allowed Roca to fulfill the dream of many artists: to make a living from his art, without having to compromise it. That is why, he says, he has the privilege of accepting only the commissions he likes. This is the case of the ARA comic, titled The immigrant in his labyrinth.

The comic will once again be the absolute protagonist of ARA's pages next week. To mark the opening of the major sector fair, Còmic Barcelona, on Friday, May 15, the entire newspaper will be illustrated by cartoonists. On this occasion, the bulk of the images are part of the history of Catalan comics through the archive of the Generalitat de Catalunya, which is collaborating on this special edition. In fact, past and present will go hand in hand because, as we have done in the already increasingly long tradition of special comic newspapers, the cover and the day's dossier will be the work of a comic author: Paco Roca, along with Valencian journalist Rodrigo Terrasa, will give their vision of a current topic, and it will be demonstrated once again that comics are also a journalistic genre.