For five or six years, Iturralde started publishing comic strips on the internet. Most of them have six cartoons, adapted to the format offered by Instagram, and the same location, the bar Beti Berdin of the village of Irizar. Half a dozen people come to him, the tabernacle and some regular clients, including Gaston himself. When the comic was used to publishing with a certain frequency, the ditxoso pandemic came in. Everybody's ways of life, knocked over. The bar Beti Berdin is witness to this. A booklet containing the stories from March to December 2020 at the time of the coronavirus.

Iturralde has drawn the comics “ever since,” but says you have to dedicate “a lot of time.” “It’s the profession that will give you the least profitability considering the hours you enter. The world of design is better because there's advertising. He has also been very precarious, but comic book -- it's a loss."

However, they faced the challenge.

Before I ran into some comic book contests and won some of them, but I felt it was time to go one step further. I received a grant generated in the context of the pandemic and began this way, publishing a weekly history on the Internet, in Basque and in Spanish, with the intention of incorporating it later in the book.

You've put the characters in the Beti Berdin bar.

At first, being Donostiarra, I wanted to locate Beti Berdin. But I'm very demanding, and the contextualization of stories in real places, like French Jacques Tardi does, when he draws the corners of Paris, would limit me a lot. I'm a little crazy about those things. If it happened in San Sebastian, I would have to perfectly draw the buildings, all the corners. After all, any village and bar served me, because they're stories that any reader can feel identified in. I chose a bar because I like it, with two wines people shake their language more easily [laughing]. Bars are one of the favorite places for socialization, and in the midst of the pandemic there were many arguments that I was interested in.

Created in hard times, everyone has a point of humor.

At first, maybe I wanted to create something deeper, more serious, to say the least, but in the end, I always get humor. The process has been like creating verses, each of the stories that had to be included in six cartoons. When you think about the joke, you have to fix the entire page.

He's done illustrations in three colors: black, white and yellow.

I've only used black and yellow ink, in addition to the blanks. For me, the most important reference is Sempé, author of Nicolás Txiki, among others; I love it, and perhaps from there also my style, like whiteness. I leave a lot of space without working, I don't like to draw the entire page.

Citing how to draw, in the world of design, what is now in the pil-pil? Is it too much to say that there is a Basque style?

I used to be Ipurbeltz, Olariaga ... The imaginary had a kind of string, but now everything is so globalized, when you see an illustration you don't know which creator has made it, at least as far as style is concerned. We all drink from the same source: the internet. Styles, like others, are becoming fashionable and go. The illustrations are now in the bogie and are used by post offices, banks, insurance companies... At another time, they used especially the photographs, the images of their old fairies. & '97; Before, an illustration that a bank would immediately use. But a photograph speaks too much, and many go to these kinds of illustrations, all flat and light, orange, yellow, blue. Until something innovative comes out.

It will be difficult to innovate.

Well, you can always do something disrupting. Everyone must follow their path. If your voice is yours alone, you will be called for a commission. But if you do what everybody does ...

They say you are more valued in advertising than in comics.

Yes, and now I make less money than when I started. Digitalization has greatly facilitated entry into this world, from the artisanal work that I had before, which was a skill. Now, on the contrary, as I say, it's become more famous, there are so many art schools, and there are not so many jobs for people. When I started, there was also no internet, everything that had to be done by hand. When the client ordered him, he called the photographer to have an object to draw, a guy or a scene model. And then I had to take myself to scan the drawing to a particular place. Now I can edit it with my devices and I also have ‘Control+Z’ [laughs]. What happens? The customer knows he has ‘Control+Z’ and is asked more often to change things.

Let's talk about comics. In addition to Beti Alike, he has illustrated two albums: In this house there is sea wind with Aintzane Usandizaga (Pamiela, 2019) and sea wind with Junkal Lertxundi (Elkar, 2021).

With the first, we won the Etxepare Prize. The project emerged in the BIKO TEKA workshops [organized by the Galtzagorri association in collaboration with the City Council of Pamplona and with the collaboration of the Etxepare Prize]. It's a nice project. They bring together a writer and an illustrator with the aim of drawing up a graphic book for children. Aintzane and I met there, we did a two-page project, and as we liked, we presented it to the Etxepare Prize. The offer to illustrate blowing from the wind of the sea came to me from the editorial, Juncal knew my work.

From a commercial point of view, has there been any change in us over the years? That is, do you notice that the comic book has more presence and/or prestige?

Yes. Comics are currently sold in “normal” bookstores, and in the case of graphic novels, let’s not say. Before or for children or frikis. Now you've realized it's one of the best ways to convey concepts and messages, and you're promoting the heap. A book to tell a few things can be too heavy for people, but the comic book has more resources, visual elements, schemes, maps -- you can put it all in, and you have the opportunity to tell deep content, like the socio-political conflicts in Afghanistan, in a “fast enough” way.

He talked about graphic novels. Are they different things and comics?

For me, there's no difference, it's just a label to sell it more easily. I think the general public links comics with superheroes, or French-Belgian collections, normally composed of 48 comics around the same character, all in their equal format. And I would say that you want to sell a different product under the name "graphic novel": an autonomous, self-understanding book, without a strict format, more flexible in terms of the number of leaves, size, aesthetics and color. But this has always been! I think you want to boast: this is a graphic novel and Tintin doesn't.

As you have said, comics are a good tool for storytelling.

If almost everything was fiction before, now more subjects are taken to the comic book. For example, you can read the comic book about anarchist Lucio Urtubia without having to resort to a novel or essay. They're in fashion similar autobiographies, more realistic themes, stories about women, everyday issues... All this is wonderful.

Are the centers aware of the value that comics can have in teaching various things?

In some centres I know that they are working. The other day I was running a workshop at the Etxebarri Institute. In literature classes, you read comics, I think it's up to the professor. Last month the students of Etxebarri read the comic Los furcos del azar de Paco Roca [about the Spanish Republican soldiers who fought against Nazism], and then they had the opportunity to speak telematically with the author himself. Young people like comics, because they explain “deep” topics in a different way. The professor said to me: "These crazy guys don't read a novel! ". Maybe it attracts more sleeves, but when you meet others you read them at ease.

In this sense, teachers have the opportunity to work transversally on concrete subjects. For example, if you are working in History around the Civil War of 36, in the Literature classes you can read comics about this event, learn more about the subject and, by the way, bring students closer to the comic book.