Interview conducted in November 2017 by Jordi Riera Pujal for Humoristán.org cartoon museum
Guille (Guillermo Martínez-Vela Fernández, Barcelona 1983) has a degree in Telecommunications Engineering, but he always preferred working on content rather than technical matters. Like many in his generation, he published his first comics in a fanzine, Los Miserables. He also drew for Distorsió, the college magazine at UPC (Polytechnic University of Catalonia) and on blogs such as Tintáculo (2007). In September 2008 he became a contributor to El Jueves, Spain’s leading satirical magazine.
In October 2010, he was recruited into El Jueves’s headquarters to act as a liaison between the editorial board and the online side and to helm a brand new section meant to deviate from the usual formula. That section eventually became “Gas de la risa” (Laughing Gas). Around that time, he also joined El Jueves's "council," where the magazine's general direction and weekly contents are decided. Its members are primarily cartoonists and their decisions are made by unanimity whenever possible. Appointed deputy editor during Mayte Quílez's tenure, he became editor of El Jueves in 2016.
In this interview, conducted face-to-face and through several emails, we want to delve into the creation of the Rich Girl from Barcelona series and the author's understanding of the cartoonist’s trade.
The author tells us about Pippa, the series' main character, who has already become popular and almost "endearing" among the magazine’s readership. She is a 17-year-old daddy's girl, very aware of her upper class upbringing and a firm believer in not commingling with the rabble. Looking pretty and having the world at her feet are her goals in life. From what we know, she doesn't really like Guille's humor: she deems her author an uncool nerd concerned with irrelevant causes such as social justice.
We thank Guille for his kindness.
Interview
The topic of upper-class lifestyle has been seldom addressed in this country's comics. How did you come to focus on this topic? What is your relationship with this social class?
I come from a petite-bourgeois family (or rather, a micro-bourgeois family), one of very hard-working parents and grandparents leading largely austere lives. I spent my childhood and adolescence in private school. It wasn't a religious school, nor prohibitively expensive, but a significant percentage of students hailed from well-off backgrounds. Very well-off. Objectively, people belonging to the country's economic elite. People whose parents don't work because they live off passive income. I experienced all of this very closely for years. I grew up surrounded by people who were way richer than me, basically. Not just at school, but among friends of friends from school, even close friends of my family. At home, I was instilled with progressive values and a concern for social justice… Therefore, as a teenager I had a front row seat to the quirks of wealthy people, while still enjoying a wide enough perspective, because I didn’t quite belong in that club. Add to the mix the frustrations and love/hate relations one develops during early adolescence, when girls ignore you and you become a side character to the most popular people in your circle.
Was it during this formative period that you began to take an interest in drawing?
Yes, I've never stopped drawing. Among my friends, I've always been "the one who draws"; it's always been my passion and my calling. If I lived in Smurf Village, I'd be the cartoonist Smurf. Humor comics, above all, are the ones I was always interested in and the ones I was good at. Astérix, Mafalda, and Superlópez, among others, were fundamental to my reading education. At fifteen, me and my classmates released a photocopied fanzine called Los Miserables. All funny comics. A lot of teenage angst and madness channeled into those pages. A lot of experimentation, too; they were my first steps into minimally developed comics.
When did you first think that what you observed in the lives of your classmates could serve as inspiration for cartoons?
At sixteen, in the midst of adolescence, going back to what I was saying earlier, it occurred to me that I could draw a kind of Mafalda-style strip, but featuring a teenage Susanita (Mafalda's conservative friend), based on a combination of some of my classmates and their families, including some aspects of my own home environment. So, I began sketching strips in my sophomore high school daily planner featuring a rich girl, and the title was just that, "Rich Girl". Initially, the main character was named Susana (for Susanita in Quino's Mafalda). But she already had the makings of today’s Rich Girl from Barcelona: huge, cutesy eyes and a privileged physique. It crossed my mind that one day I could publish the character in El Jueves, a magazine I'd been reading regularly since I was thirteen. Besides, there weren't any posh characters in El Jueves, nor were there many female characters. The idea that it could be a good series for El Jueves was ripening in my head, but I lacked the chops. So I put it off until I'd learned more. But it was always my goal.
Finally, the dream came true. How did Rich Girl from Barcelona end up in the pages of El Jueves?
Fifteen years later, when I had already begun publishing some cartoons about current affairs in El Jueves, and more fanzine-style pieces like the ones for “Gas de la risa”, it occurred to me that maybe it was time to take a chance and create the series I'd had in mind for so long. It's not that I was obsessed with the idea, but it was something I'd been putting off and in which I saw a lot of potential. Especially because it's very common to satirize posh people only at the most superficial level, which, on the other hand, is perfectly logical, because what characterizes that social class is in fact superficiality. But I wanted to go beyond the simpler caricatures of posh people; I wanted to portray and satirize the many dimensions to the Spanish upper class. Always through my personal lens and humor, but based on realities I've seen first-hand and that I continue to reflect on.
With the series, then, you don't just aim for a smile or a laugh; you also have an underlying objective as a comedian…
My goal was for Rich Girl from Barcelona to be both a portrait and a satire of the upper class, so that we could all laugh at these people, who, in general, inspire a lot of admiration. It focused on the character of Pippa, but it gave great importance to the people around her: her family and friends, who represent different archetypes within the posh world. Posh people are, in a way, the cream of the crop in our society; people see themselves reflected in them, and many humble people aspire to be like them and imitate their customs. With the series, I intend to undermine that, to ridicule posh people and their values.
You talk about young posh people, and not posh grownups. Why did you choose to focus on this age group?
I have the feeling that in adolescence is when one’s privileged roots are most evident. A 16- or 17-year-old can't have become a millionaire on their own merits. It's also a special age where the values that one will carry along for the rest of their life are fully consolidated, where a person's character is forged. There are rites of passage, some new responsibilities are assumed, new environments are explored, there are traumas that carry over into adulthood... We've all been teenagers, and we remember our adolescence as an important time, one with ups and downs.
You've been publishing a weekly page on the topic of rich people for three years now, and it doesn't look like the series is running out of steam. What is it about this topic that makes it so popular?
One thing that makes posh characters easy to work with in a comic series is that they don't change. One of their core features is the perpetuation of their values. Although each generation of posh characters may follow some passing fads, they remain practically unchanged. The posh characters from my father's youth are very similar to the posh characters of my own youth, who in turn are similar to the posh characters of today. This is by design. Some people see small changes, and I suppose there are some, of course, but the classic posh archetype remains the same; it's classic for a reason. It's the most immutable subculture or social class. That's a goldmine for a satirist. These characters aren't associated with any specific era; they're relevant throughout the decades. Although the characters in Rich Girl from Barcelona carry smartphones, readers recognize the posh people of their own time; they're easy-to-identify characters based on fairly universal references. Because they're the byproduct of a defining characteristic of our society: inequality and class differences. The latest recession only exacerbated this, as we well know.
Another thing I find very comfortable is that posh people are all about composure, all about keeping up appearances. So any gag that involves someone losing their temper is already funny. Sweet, angelic Pippa losing her shit and doing a wild take is always a good laugh. She's a character who doesn't understand the world and she can afford to live in ignorance. So if you place her in any situation that seems normal to us, she'll easily end up behaving in surprising ways. And that's where the comedy comes from.
You're an author who reflects on the mechanisms of humor; you don't just think of a gag and draw it. What does the series offer you as a creator?
Aside from social commentary, I like to use my character to create somewhat experimental gags. I like to play with the possibilities of the frame and the language of comics. And I also like to try out comedic devices that challenge my skills. I don't know if the reader notices this, but it's something I really enjoy.
Can you tell us about how you thought about the characters' different personalities and their graphic representation?
One peculiar aspect is the character design, especially that of the protagonist, Pippa. I forced myself to make her eyes somewhat anime-style (within my limitations) because I thought it was a very effective way to portray her as a girly-girl. I like that in a series like Rich Girl from Barcelona, each main character has a unique design, portraying different body types and builds. It doesn't matter if the character designs sometimes clash or aren't coherent with each other; I like that.
Can you share any interesting anecdotes about the series?
When the series premiered in the magazine (as a one-off, three-page collection of strips with no continuity, just to test the waters, since my colleagues on the editorial board weren't entirely convinced about the proposal), I used some of the jokes I had doodled in my high school daily planner back in the day. It's kind of crazy, but I thought if those jokes were funny to me when I was sixteen and they're still funny now, it must be because they were good enough.
November 2017, https://humoristan.org
Translation of the interview originally conducted in Catalan
