Bachelor of History, librarian… Always between files and documents. How did it happen to bring all that information collected to the comic book?

I worked as a professor in the 1990s. In class, I was projecting films, I think film is an appropriate means of dealing with some subjects, it helps to alleviate material that can be weighed down on students. At that time, I met the French comic book and it gave me a new gender perspective. Comics on the War of Independence of Algeria and the Paris Commune, by Jacques Tarden… Flipaba. “Arraigo, we too have a rich story, why isn’t it that way?” I thought.

Indeed, you often say that France is an example.

Yes, it is my north, both in the making of the comic book and in the way of working history. That's where the most important history schools are, and outreach is so heavy. In this sense, comics serve to emerge a series of facts. Besides entertaining, they should aim to disseminate the contents. They are a way of showing things nearby, not only the great world stories, but those that have happened in the region, the experiences of indigenous people…

The battles of Matxitxako and Sollube, the action of the shipyards of Bizkaia… If the memory does not fail me, these historical events hardly taught us anything from the school.

What happens is that big, topical issues are taught. The students must be provided with resources to address the issues from another point of view. I try to escape the topics, choose a specific theme and give it a different point of view, using the characters to do so. Everyone interprets what is happening in their own way.

In the Helize adventure comic, for example, there are “Irish brothers” who want to help, and there are “Phoenicians” who want to protect “all the oppressed by German boots” and, above all, link trade agreements with Britain.

Yes, yes. The former use the term “Phoenicians” as an insult. This term was used by Sabino Arana, in the article of the Phoenicia flag, published in the newspaper Bizkaitarra, to denounce a current within his party [PNV], represented by the leading businessman Ramón de la Sota. [In the aforementioned article, “disregarding the fires of trade and industry”, Arana pointed out to the “sasi-nationalists” who were committed to their particular economic interests, as stated in the glossary of Helize].

The comic is part of the sinking of the Artaun-Mendi steam. Behind this fact is a real story.

Yes. When I was a kid, my godfather told us that he had been in a shipwreck during World War I. He traveled aboard a boat called Ason and the Germans headed to Glasgow. As in the comic book, the German submarine brought the crew to the coast, joining their boat with a rope. In these cases, a speedboat sailor always carried the axe in his hand to cut the rope by a submarinist at the bottom.

The sea is very present in your work.

The history of the Sopelana area is linked to the sea. Many neighbours of Uribe Kosta have worked in Naval Trade, perhaps not as much as fishermen. Anton, in the Helize comic book, is the alter ego of my other godfather. He was a fisherman, from Armintza. I've noticed that people have been identified with comic book passages, which are close to them.

It tends to reflect raw times. Have you ever been censored when writing about a theme or character?

When I made the spike of the crows, I was tempted to self-censor, so to speak. The comic focuses on the real facts and some of its protagonists are still alive, such as the man who acted as a whistleblower or spy, a somewhat obscure guy. But I decided to talk about it with its name. We can't always be afraid. In addition, in this case, in particular, in a previously published book all the data on it appeared. I had doubts, because talking without evidence can be dangerous, but there were tests, and I'm also clear that in comics you have to always tell the truth, you can't lie.

You can play with fiction, you can play with lies, you can play comics with newspaper stains or you can play them on a historical basis. But the reader must distinguish well what fiction is from what the truth is, he must know where the limits are between the two, for which the comic dossiers are added. The problem arises when you sell the invented as a real story. Or when reality is too big to relate to the writer's vision.

When we get the job of documenting a comic book, it's sent to documentation and fiction is placed at your command.

You talk about the journalistic genre. We journalists are also “afraid” to point anyone out without evidence…

In fact, there is a close relationship between comics and journalism. France is also an example. One comic I often mention is the Cher pays de notre enfance by Etienne Davoudeau. Former President Charles de Gaulle appears on the skin, sprinkled with other people’s blood, to illustrate how state-related organizations used the dirty war [in the context of the Algerian war]. It is the result of an in-depth investigation by the draftsman and the journalist Benoît Collombat. It collects very powerful data, it's a good book. The comic also has that ability to bring to light a less known dark side.

At first he was accompanied by the cartoonist Ricardo Sendra, and Iñaket since 2008. How do you get with the illustrator?

To one point we collaborate and from there they are free, because you can not always control the draftsman. I'm doing the script, describing things, defining the cartoons a little, the conversations… Then everyone interprets it in their own way. Iñaki makes a draft -- well, sometimes she doesn't teach me [laughter]. I try to send the documentation as accurate as possible, with photographs of any object. Iñakete and I met when I worked in the library of the San Francisco [Bilbao] neighborhood. We decided to create a project and introduce it at the comic book fair in Angulema [France]. It is also sold to the French publisher Cambourakis and to Norma Española [they published Tristísima Ceniza]. With Nora, we went back to work.

Speaking of Angulema, are these kinds of fairs important to publicize works or to strengthen relationships?

Yes, they are necessary, on many sides. If you're an editor, for example, you can sell and buy rights. And if you're an author and you put on a table where you sell and you sign the comics, you relate, you meet friends… It creates a special environment where people come together from the same hobby. Rather than for money, because the comic book is not very profitable in that sense, creators are doing it for hobby. Of course, money is also important if someone wants to dedicate himself professionally to the comic book, but if he does not have a hobby… For many publishers fairs such as Angulema or Getxo offer the possibility of selling the products directly, without distributors, which is more profitable for the author.

They have published it with the editorial Helize Harriet. It publishes a lot of comics in Basque. I think it's an important support.

It's an important column, yes. Harriet, as a person, is a cyclone. He founded the editorial in 2015 with the objective of re-editing comics made by him and other authors in the 1980s, translating works created in France to the Basque Country, or accommodating authors related to the Basque comic book. It has become a reference, it has generated a request. In the past, it was said that there were no comic books, but there was also not much to read. And another leg is the promotion leg. It is difficult to connect interviews, the comic strip has not taken its own place in the cultural sections of the media.

Do you notice any changes in this regard? In other words, the comic book has another “status,” to put it in some way.

If we talk about prestige, yes. Before, it seemed like children's teapoos were comics. Now they have become “graphic novels,” they have such a tone… Well, that term emerged on the road to intellectual status, partly as “sequential art.” But it is true that topics that were not common in the past, from new points of view, are brought to the comic book. I think comic book has a certain prestige, but with that you have to sell it, it has to be economically profitable. Normally I was told that the comics they sell most are not a complete graphic novel… In France I don’t know how many copies they sell like those – except for Persepolis, perhaps – but more commercials, by manga, although there may be many manga things. It's ultimately about making the choice as broad as possible, about making people who have comics on any subject at their fingertips.

He talked about manga, a genre that is associated with young readers. It will not be easy to attract young people to comics in Basque.

Because the competition is huge, because the Internet has a wide range of possibilities. When we were young, one of the great hobbies was reading the comics. We did it in the middle of hiding, because it wasn’t “serious”, it was for children… Then, when adult comics arrived, children’s and young people’s products were marginalized a little, the transmission was interrupted, although it is now slowly recovering. Harriet himself has published several comics, Astiberri also, some classics (Asterix, Tintin) have been reedited, we have Xabiroi…

He has collaborated in the journal published by the Confederation of Ikastolas. Does it play an important role in the approach of the young reader to the comic book?

I think so. It is one of the keys in the Basque comic book, a solid and regular basis. It publishes an album a year, in addition to the quarterly magazine. And all those authors who come together around the project -- you have to take care of it.

And in teaching, how do you see the picture?

I have the feeling that the comic book isn't working too hard. In any case, I have received in the blog Komikeri some requests for bibliography. I've also been asked for things from Berritzegunes, even from some centers, because being a comic book, art, it's interesting to take it to class, not only to work on how a comic is made, but also to encourage reading. Teaching is sometimes very rigid and it is difficult to insert a new material. A few years ago [between 2014-2017] we organised in Bilbao a conference of Parrapea, including the comic book competition. We contacted the centers that offered the artistic baccalaureate, gave some workshops and the students presented their work to the competition. If the comic does not work at the artistic baccalaureate…

I didn't ask him, how do you bring all this from the pandemic?

The lockdown for me was a pagotx, I had a lot of time! (Laughter). Comics should be read calmly. We live in haste, we often read too much and too soon. In the lockdown, we took another rhythm and I enjoyed the comics that I had at home. They're like a painting, if you start to see them calmly, you'll appreciate them differently.

Chronicler of the battlefields

Mikel Begoña Garaizar. Born in Sopelana in 1964. She holds a degree in history, a librarian – she now works in the municipal library of the Begoña Bilbaíno district – and a comic book writer. Auto-edit his first album with the Argentine artist Ricardo Sendra: Sea of Lead (Dec Erroak, 2007) on the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Matxitxako. In 2008 he began his collaboration with the illustrator Bilbaíno Iñaket, with whom he publishes Tristísima Ceniza (Norma/Cambourakis, 2011), which gathers the wars of Sollube and the experiences of the photographer Robert Capa; The peak of the crows. To kill Franco (Norma, 2013), on the case of the anarchists Joaquín Delgado and Francisco Granado, arrested in 1963 for the alleged installation of explosives in the buildings of two ministries, in Madrid; the trilogy Ötzi (Norma, 2015-2019), an account set in the Copper Age, and the activity of Helize (Harriet tillet, in the first Asero 2020). Among them, another comic in Basque: Arditatuak (Asociación Bertsozale Elkartea, 2017) with drawings by Adur Larrea. In 2012 he created the blog Komikeri, a repository of comics in Basque Komikeri.wordpress.com.