Comic book character Capita¡n Trueno gave hope to a nation bowed under Franco’s dictatorship. Decades later, Spain’s national hero is about to make his screen debut. Owain Thomas reports
He stands over 1.85m tall, wears a red smock over his chainmail and tends to have a hefty broadsword in his hand. Looking like that, I thought Capitán Trueno would be easy to find in the centre of Barcelona. Nevertheless, it takes four attempts, in four different comic shops, before I finally lay eyes on him.
While his blade may have blunted over the years and his shield appears frayed at the edges, he still has a big smile on his face. And even if a younger, brasher crowd of superheroes surround him in cardboard, he looks at ease – almost avuncular – like a fellow who has fought and won the kind of battles that would make their edges curl.
In his heyday, Capitán Trueno – Captain Thunder – was the star of the Spanish comics known as tebeos. Shifting several hundred thousand copies a week in the late 1950s, this Barcelona-born, 12th-century knight quickly became the nation’s number one comic book hero and made industry legends of his creators, writer Victor Mora and artist Ambrós. And he is still on a crusade today. With Thunder Captain, an English-language adaptation of his exploits set to be filmed in July, he could be about to lead Spain’s movie industry into the promised land of big-budget film-making and become a global star in the process.
But as much as Capitán Trueno’s future success will be measured on attracting an international following at the box office – like dozens of paper-borne heroes before him – it is the ideological victory he once inspired against General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship that sets him apart.
So what turned this ordinary cartoon character into a champion of the oppressed? And what made his comic book adventures, as the Catalán writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán once put it, the ‘progressive discourse in the middle of Francoist orthodoxy’?
Inspired by the epic fantasy of Hal Foster’s 1930s comic strip Prince Valiant, Victor Mora’s Capitán Trueno shared more than just the globetrotting medieval chivalry of his predecessor – they both arrived at times when they were sorely needed.
Returning to comic strips after the Great Depression, Canadian-born Foster created an elaborate medieval world of kings, despots and sea monsters to provide an absorbing alternative to the economic crisis. Appearing every Sunday in New Orleans’ Times-Picayune, Prince Valiant’s triumphs over adversity provided good news stories to offset the bad.
By the time Capitán Trueno was introduced to a Spanish audience in the late Fifties, the country was broken. Having already lived through a bitter three-year civil war, Spain was in the throes of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, who assumed power after the conflict ended in 1939.
The country was struggling economically, and the victorious Nationalist rebels were set on purging the remnants of Republicanism. This would not only include the forced exile of the former Republican government – who had ruled the Second Spanish Republic until Franco assumed control – but also the revenge killings of opposition leaders and associated rojos (suspected Communists). The hopelessness of the defeated was immeasurable. Over half a million refugees fled Spain before 1945.
Among them was a young Victor Mora, who had found that the Arthurian-era legends of Prince Valiant provided a hopeful and wholesome break from reality. From an early age, he had learnt which side his heroes were on. ‘One thing that fascinated me about these [knights] was their defence of the weak and the oppressed,’ he said, ‘and their indefatigable spirit of justice against the bellicose and the scoundrels who darken our lives.’
In Franco’s Spain, the make-believe world of the tebeos could also provide a certain amount of relief. ‘[They offered] a distraction from the boredom, the humiliation, and even the hunger of those poor young Spaniards who were suffering the after-effects of losing a war and gaining a caudillo [dictator],’ wrote Mora’s wife Armonía Rodríeguez in El Gran Libro Del Capitán Trueno. t the time, tebeos appeared to conform to the ‘evasion culture’ the dictatorship required. Categorised along with bullfighting, football, film or state-run TV, they were viewed as apolitical entertainment for the masses – so long as they did not deviate from the official line.
‘When one talks of the post-war comic book, the term “collective memory” is fundamental. It’s something that the State tried to deliberately manipulate by using censorship,’ says Manuel Lopez of Tebeosfera.com. ‘Repression and censorship didn’t serve to intermittently suppress subversive thought, but to drown-out indefinitely the existence of such opinions.’
Pulgarcito, a weekly since 1921, was one of the first tebeos to suffer. One of the comic book’s most popular strips was Carpanta, a perpetually luckless character who was constantly searching for food. He was written out on the orders of the dictator, who decreed: ‘In Franco’s Spain, no one goes hungry.’ Intentional or not, Franco was riled by the topical sub-text, and was effectively banning the concept of hunger. Proving just how resilient that collective memory proved to be, today carpanta is slang for ‘ravenous hunger’.
It was Mora’s character, however, that would take the influence of tebeos further and begin systematically to expose the inadequacies of an out-of-touch regime.
From his Valencia-based production company Maltés Producionnes, film director Pau Vergara says the comic’s influence cannot be underestimated. ‘Capitán Trueno is the most important national comic ever published, and was the ethical and moral reference for an entire generation. He was a hero who, in a period when there were no freedom or democracy, battled against the powerful to liberate people.’
On the brink of turning the comics of his boyhood hero into a €15m ($23m) film, Vergara’s belief in the character seems based on more than just a warm feeling of nostalgia. fter his creation in 1956, Capitán Trueno rapidly became the antithesis of everything for which the regime stood. A smiling Renaissance man, seeking justice not revenge, his comic book persona would not only offer thousands of readers a fresh focus for their pride, but also give them a taste of something they were seriously lacking: a victory.
Writing in Spanish newspaper El Mundo nearly 50 years later, Mora explained his character’s appeal: ‘He never lost his battles; he was never defeated. And this was exactly how we all wanted to be in our dreams: undefeated.’
But while Capitán Trueno’s fight against global tyranny provided a moral compass for the new generation, unsurprisingly, it did not sit as happily with the censors. Although the sub-text was often too intellectual for them to pick up – like the occasional name-dropping of Plato’s The Republic as his favourite tome – two things seriously grated against the Francoist belief system and further define Trueno’s resistance.
The yellow- and red-banded flag on his chest was whitewashed for its close resemblance to the Cataluñan flag, the Senyera. This symbolic cut was seen by most Cataláns (and some Valencians, whose flag is similar) as a further suppression of their identity under Franco. And the censorship simply worked to strengthen Capitán Trueno’s popularity because it made him one of the oppressed. Mora expressed the recklessness of the cut, citing that his hero, ‘lived in the 12th century, [when] Spain wasn’t even a nation!’.
The establishment next targeted Trueno’s religious irreverence, requesting that he marry his eternal love interest, Queen Sigrid, or stop travelling around the globe with her out of wedlock, as it was setting the wrong example. ‘A Spanish crusader must have the word of God more readily on his lips,’ was the official line.
However, it was not until 1982 (seven years after the death of Franco) that the pair finally got together – and even then it did not end in marriage. Times had certainly changed, with the story making headline news on Spain’s state-run TVE news under the banner: ‘Capitán Trueno and Sigrid finally consummate their love.’
Today, Capitán Trueno’s enduring popularity can be found all over Spain and beyond, from street names to online communities. That said, the super-hero’s battle is not over. Having been taken into preproduction twice already by two other directors, the film version has up until now failed to materialise. This time, however, the project seems to have gathered unstoppable momentum. After previewing a teaser in Cannes and the LA Film Festival last year, and a highly successful outing to the Berlin Film Festival this February, Maltés Producciones has managed to strike a deal with the Spanish arm of Walt Disney, and proceeded to sell the rights to at least 50 countries.
When I ask Julio Fernandez, sales manager at the production company, who he thinks should fill the title role, he shakes his head and says: ‘That’s not for me to say, but it will have to be someone very special.’
Perhaps recent Oscar-winner Javier Bardem has got shoulders big enough to take on the crusade?
‘Who can tell, but he would have to do it at a reduced rate,’ comes the reply. I wonder what he would say if they asked him to do it for Spain?
ON A MISSION
Fundació Victor Mora is an hour away from the city of Girona in the seafront town of L’Escala. It is dedicated to the preservation of Capitán Trueno writer Victor Mora’s studio and works.
ON THE MAP
Calle Capitán Trueno: located in a suburb south-east of central Madrid. This street in the Rivas district might not be as rugged as the comic book hero, but still wears his name with pride.
ON THE SHELF
Continuarà: Barcelona’s most famous comic shop. Opened in 1980, this massive store should be the first point of call for anyone looking to flick through the past masters of Spanish comics. Via Laietana, 29, Barcelona.
ON TRUENO
El Gran Libro del Capitán Trueno, by Armonía Rodríguez. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Capitán Trueno’s birth, the wife of Victor Mora created this tribute to the men in her life. Full of historical information and colourful excerpts from the comics.
ONLINE
The foremost website for all Truenophiles and the official meeting place of the Asociación de Amigos del Capitán Trueno.
Where to stay
Barcelona
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Le Meridien Hotels & Resorts
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