From Pioneer of Comics to Cultural Myth: Castelao in Galician Graphic Biography

The multifaceted Galician artist, writer and politician Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao (1886-1950) has been considered a pioneer of Galician comics or banda deseñada due to his key role in the development of the medium, from his early comic strips in the magazine Vida Gallega [Galician Life] (1909), to the cartoons he published in the press in the 1920s and 1930s. Furthermore, Castelao has also become a comics character in a number of graphic biographies since the end of the 1970s, which the article will examine, not only addressing the reasons for the recurrent presence of Castelao in Galician comics but also how they have contributed to the process of mythologisation of this important figure of Galician culture. In aesthetic terms, it will reveal the similarities between adaptation, biography and comics when analysing them as networks.