The Spanish Civil War was an immensely significant historical event that devastated an influential country, entangled powerful leaders of pre–World War II Europe, and violently manifested dominant ideological conflicts of the twentieth century. Though the war ended in 1939, it is an emotionally charged topic that has enduring political and psychological relevance. La Guerra Civil Española is the title of the Spanish-language version of a thorough study of the war written by the eminent English Hispanist Sir Paul Preston. A comic book–style graphic adaptation of this authoritative work, also entitled La Guerra Civil Española and available only in Spanish, was published in 2016. This textually dense, 239-page graphic history book explores the causes, evolution, resolution, and consequences of the Spanish Civil War through informative narration and artistically diverse sequential images. This paper argues that the graphic adaptation of La Guerra Civil Española combines straightforward, factual narration with illustrations that employ varying degrees of artistic abstraction in conjunction with intensely symbolic visual elements in order to capture and convey the historical, emotional, and international dimensions of the Spanish Civil War. The book memorably demonstrates the versatility and expressive potential of the comics medium, and it reveals graphic narration as an emotive yet factually robust method of recounting traumatic historical events. La Guerra Civil Española represents a notable expansion of the comic form into the domain of scholarly publications and is an important contribution to the graphic nonfiction genre.
About the presenterRobert Keim
Robert Keim is an editorial consultant and technical writer who has worked with a diverse collection of scholarly subject matter in the sciences and the humanities. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California, San Diego, and he is currently pursuing a Master’s in English at Youngstown State University.