The quadrilateral of Chumy and El Roto

"The sun rises for everyone" reads the sign of a grocery store in Madrid (now converted into a Chinese supermarket), as if it were the driving phrase of the legendary Chumy Chumez, who painted in each cartoon a black, round star, full of power. An omnipresent sun that illuminated the poor and burnt the powerful. The cartoonist defied the obscurantism of the dictatorship with light.  Every day had Chumy's sun on page three of the editorials. As long as the newspaper Madrid democrático was allowed to appear on the newsstands, Chumy watered his little patch of paper on which the sun always shone.

The Spanish press has a healthy habit of leaving a small piece of editorial page without letters, without thoughtful lines. It is usually leased to an artist who likes a thick line or a sharp line. Perhaps it is the most grateful corner of the newspaper, or perhaps the most difficult to carve out. Commenting on current affairs with a drawing, an illustration, an image accompanied by a sandwich (chorizo is fine, even Carpanta's sardines) is a task reserved for geniuses. Because only an artist can make that photo-minute of the day with a pencil and a lot of imagination.

Chumy was the labourer of the blank space of the Madrid newspaper. He came from San Sebastián, leaving behind a past as a grey accountant, and opened veins of great inspiration in his criticism of the established powers. He painted men with horrible faces or perplexed people or solemn paupers... next to his black sun. He gave them phrases, as in film scripts, and they portrayed themselves with the foolishness of solemnity. He had a predilection for the richest of the rich, capped with a top hat, who spoke high-minded nonsense. And for the afflicted with berets and stooped gait. "Everything that is not compulsory is strictly forbidden". A clear summary of the dictatorship that Chumy fought, like a patient farmer, with his daily sunshine.

One day a quiet boy with good manners and a philosophical look appeared at his side and decided to give him the alternative in Madrid, where he stayed. Andrés Rábago hid under the sign of OPS, although he ended up punching holes in power with the more understandable (?) nickname of El Roto. Without seeming to break a few plates, Andrés got into the free ring of the opinion page and started throwing white slaps at those same powers that - in dictatorship or democracy - clog everything up. El Roto is a grey-haired boy who attends (or teaches) philosophy class with a sharp pencil in his hand and takes notes from nature that end up as editorials to be framed. 

So fine and ironic or so strong and clear were his painted criticisms - those of that young OPS and those of the master Chumy -, that in the end they were left without a plot. There was no more newspaper. The whole of the Madrid newspaper was left in ruins. Those were not the times for lyricism, nor for epics, nor for intentional illustration... The Madrid newspaper was blown up, but the atmosphere of the collapse continues to permeate the smells of democracy. We had to look for other places to sow drawings and letters.

The great Chumy left us and the great Roto follows in his wake, in his own way, with his own style. He has a more technical drawing, and an equally refined phrase. Both are of the Goyaesque lineage, who are not afraid to take out their pencil and stick it into the most powerful testuz.  With the living anniversary of the 50th anniversary of the closure of the Madrid newspaper, a surprising book has been published with the vignettes of both El Roto and Chumy Chumez, who both ride the time and criticise the situation. 

Thanks to them, the so-called - happily for the profession - graphic journalism has reached a level of freedom, strength, style and influence that other ninety-line editorials would have liked. With their irony and their denunciation, they fill that empty space on the editorial page that allows us to learn to be freer, to dream further and to believe that the press is really the one that fries the powers that be. Says a malencarao painted by Chumy. "There are three human rights. See, hear and be silent".  Let's add that the right to "draw" is enough to sabotage the single thought. 

Along with the published book, an exhibition with cartoons by Chumy Chumez and El Roto has been organised at the Carlos de Amberes Foundation in Madrid.