The Civil War in vignettes: printed ephemera between the two centuries

Abstract

This article aims at studying the main propagandistic strategies of the printed ephemera that circulated during the Spanish Civil War, as well as analysing how the graphic novel Picasso en la Guerra Civil (2019), by Daniel Torres, revisits and reworks these printed documents. Firstly, we will explore the characteristics of documents that bring together texts and images to convey a political message. Secondly, we will examine the levels of fiction that make up Torres's graphic novel and analyse some reworkings of ephemeral printed matter published between 1936 and 1939, such as war posters, banners, magazines, caricatures and “aleluyas”. As we shall see, Torres starts from heterogeneous authentic materials, mixes them with various propagandistic techniques used during the Spanish war and arrives at a metaliterary discourse on the possibilities of graphic genres.