On the Names of the Spanish Graphic Fathers: Patrilineal Narratives in Gallardos’ Un largo silencio and Altarribas’ El arte de volar

Abstract

ABSTRACT The editorial flourishing of graphic narratives in Spain provided memoirs and fictionalisations of the civil war and the dictatorship at the core of the phenomenon. I analyse the transmission of paternal memories in the works of Miguel Ángel Gallardo and Francisco Gallardo (Un largo silencio, 1997) and Antonio Altarriba and Kim (El arte de volar, 2009). While both Gallardo and Altarriba collect and (re)produce their father’s memories, I point out their distinct approaches that echo two different zeitgeists of representation. The spirit of the Spanish transition – the so-called ‘Pact of Silence’ – that prevails in Gallardo’s patrilineal account, was revisited throughout a sort of Lacanian père-version in Altarriba’s narrative. The latter perverts, in form and substance, the Transition as a patrilineal norm, constituting a transgression from the symbolic status quo, from the silence that actually prevails in both Gallardo’s story and the transition itself, although without abandoning the patriarchal lineage and scope. I argue that while that patrilineal account is symbolic, celebratory and literal in Un largo silencio, such patrilineality unfolds as imaginary, inquisitive and literary in Altarriba’s narrative.