Carlos Giménez

Spain was not a pretty place during the reign of General Franco, especially for his opposition. This graphic novel describes the plight of their orphaned children, like the author himself, Carlos Giménez. He recounts numerous vignettes, in various church-run schools, where kids were routinely abused, physically and mentally and starved. Unfortunately, the stories were too similar, one to the next, and utterly depressing in respect of the nasty things adults do to children in their care. Also, the boys all looked alike, which makes it hard to differentiate them as well.… (more)

Cited in The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys

A crushingly sad and horrifying window into the Social Aid "Homes" of Franco's fascist Spain, from the late 1930s through the early 1950s. Many of the boys there were orphans, but others had living family members who either couldn't afford to keep them, or whom the government deemed "immoral" and seized the children - who were then hideously mistreated, subjected to hunger, thirst, violence, and shame. Some boys turned into bullies themselves; others found solace and friendship in each other.

Afterword by Carmen Moreno-Nuno:

"By rejecting the so-called Pact of Silence about the Civil War and the Franco repression that endured throughout the democratic period in Spain, Paracuellos places itself firmly within the spirit that promoted the drafting of the Historic Memory Act bu recognizing and dignifying the victims of the war and the dictatorship."

"Paracuellos stems from a sense of historic urgency to create a legacy of witnesses that recognizes the profound connection between the personal and the historical."

"Carlos Gimenez uses his mastery of the comic strip medium to create a new paradigm that establishes a dialogue between history and memory, and converts it into a demand for moral justice."… (more)