The comic that narrated and claimed the Spain emptied more than 40 years ago

A page from the first volume of 'Soledad', by Tito, edited by Cascaborra.

It is said that the elderly treasure wisdom.

And, certainly, the reaction of Tiburcio de la Llave's grandmother showed a lot of common sense.

—Oh, son.

An old wrinkled one on the cover.

Do not do that.

Nobody is going to read your book.

Her grandson was showing her a portrait inspired by her.

And he said that he intended to use it to launch

Soledad,

a series of comics focused on village life.

Lady María's prophecy, in reality, was not so far off.

It was 1982 and Spain was looking for something else, including editors.

“In my own family they told me that it was the past, we were in the middle of the Movida.

Only 47 pages of the first volume were published,” recalls Tito, the name by which the author is better known, on the phone from France, where he emigrated as a child.

And where

Soledad

could be read in its entirety.

Four decades have had to pass for her native country to pay off the debt to the prodigal son.

But the six volumes (Cascaborra) arrive with enormous delay and, at the same time, with perfect punctuality.

Today, emptied Spain, depopulation, abandonment and return to the countryside occupy headlines, essays and films.

Just like historical memory.

But Tito had drawn everything long before.

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The last of the village in Galicia “take care of themselves”: “Before you went out and talked to people.

Now there is no one”

“Maybe I was too early,” he laughs.

In

Soledad

there are women chatting and sewing on the threshold of the house;

schools that close and minds that never opened;

gossip and solidarity, envy and simplicity;

conflicts over trifles or that divide the town as well as the entire country;

and, all around, goats, sheepdogs and mountain air.

“There is no doubt that the word that best defines Tito is 'authenticity',” highlights the appendix to the fourth volume,

Wounded Memory.

Neither idyllic nor condescending, his cartoons were intended to be real.

As if one of Soledad's neighbors drew them.

Or almost.

Cover of 'The Last Joy', first volume of 'Soledad', by Tito, published by Cascaborra.

Because Tito was born in 1957 in Valdeverdeja, a Toledo village that today has just over 500 inhabitants.

And, although the family left for Paris in 1963 for economic reasons - the triumph of plastic knocked down his parents' pottery business - the creator has not stopped returning several times a year to those cobbled streets.

Nor to discover his stories.

“I have never needed to read a book to know what a town was like.

I had mine and it was enough for me.

When I wanted to be inspired by people, I simply crossed paths with them,” he points out.

In France they called him “the Spaniard.”

For some relatives, however, he was “the French cousin.”

Trapped between two homelands, every time Tito returned home he tried to find out more.

From his family, and from whoever he met.

He says that in Valdeverdeja he became “the young man who asked.”

From each story another emerged, one interlocutor gave access to the next.

This is how the first installments of

Soledad were born.

Everyday episodes of jealousy, eternal friendships, platonic loves and isolated lives among a handful of alleys.

“When you are rootless, your origin takes on particular importance.

I needed to find my roots, and teach that Spain was not just what the French saw as tourists: flamenco, bullfights, parties...”, says Tito.

Although his French editors, apparently, were even more surprised when he introduced another issue into the plots: the Civil War.

The cartoonist Tiburcio de la Llave, better known as Tito, in a photograph provided by the Cascaborra publishing house.

“It's true that when I started asking about it, people were already talking less.

'Why do you want to bore the French,' they told me.

It must have been the first time it was discussed in a comic,” Tito acknowledges.

Hence he advanced into unknown territory.

In some way, he marked the path that cartoonists like Paco Roca and Alfonso Zapico tread today.

“I said what I wanted and tried not to forget.

I was moved by the desire to maintain that memory.

“I have never wanted to be in fashion,” says the creator.

In fact, it was rather the opposite.

Among so many vignettes of hypersexualized women in those years, he drew wrinkles and bodies like everyone else's;

In a ninth art then aimed particularly at men, he garnered a large female audience;

and, to shed the label of teen comic specialist, which came with the success of the series

Tierno suburbio

, he turned to an opposite work: adult and rural.

“I have always liked to break, not do like others,” he confesses.

Seen from today, in addition to being different, he seems ahead.

In one vignette, a young man reproaches his girlfriend: “Your feminist side gets the better of you.”

To which she responds: “Working with a macho like you doesn't leave much room for women.”

And furthermore, starting with the fourth volume,

Soledad

dared to narrate another conflict, the one that left the most silent and painful wound in Spain.

Although Tito promises that the reasons were personal, much more than political: “My grandfather had died and I felt the urge to tell those memories.”

Sketch for a vignette from 'Soledad', by Tito, edited by Cascaborra.

They called him Tiburcio after his grandfather.

And The Phantom Man

, the title of the fifth volume,

alludes to his confinement and escape .

Here is what he experienced and what his grandfather described to him.

And also Justino, Tito's father: then just a boy, today a 94-year-old man who still accompanies his son on visits to Valdeverdeja.

So the vignettes, like the people, are invaded by terror, shootings and searches by the Civil Guard.

And because of forgetfulness: old friends are suddenly called “reds.”

And they are locked up without hearing any objections.

Tito believes that he would have been able to access archives like Toledo's to expand his investigation.

But he never even tried: the voices of the village gave him plenty of material.

And first hand.

So much so that he still regrets not having dedicated more books to

Soledad

: the success of his other series, such as the police series

Jaunes

, took up his time.

At least, the complete work can finally be read in Spanish.

And, incidentally, alleviate an old concern of Grandpa Tiburcio: “He always saw our departure to France as something that hurt him.

One of the times we were returning from vacation he told me: 'Now that you are in a different country, I ask that you never tell me that my grandson misbehaves.'

Tito has never been forgotten.

About it, about the other stories, about the people.

He has done even more: he has drawn it for everyone's memory.

A page from 'Soledad', by Tito, edited by Cascaborra.

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