Carla Berrocal: "Francoism has been a burden both for the copla and for Concha Piquer"

VALENCIA. "Mother, I'm not moving from here until this idiot pays me for mine!" These words could have perfectly come from the mouth of the Valencian singer Concha Piquer in one of her performances in Alicante in 1920. Piquer said something like "If I don't earn money, I don't have fun" and it is undoubtedly an excellent letter of introduction for the character of Doña Concha.

The illustrator Carla Berrocal has decided to pay her the tribute she deserves in an illustrated way. From Culturplaza we talked with the author of this comic to unravel the story of the Spanish singer and actress who marked a before and after in the world of copla. We open Concha Piquer's trunk and the pages of her comic.

-We started strong, as an illustrator... How reflected do you feel with the phrase "if I don't earn money I don't have fun"?

-I see myself totally reflected, Concha Piquer was a very wise person. Both illustration and comics are extremely precarious media, and in the art world it sometimes seems that since you do what you like, you have to do it for free. Hint, it's not like that at all, and we have to demand that we be paid as professionals.

-Do you consider that the world of comics is undervalued?

-What happens with comics is that they become infantilized a lot, as if it were only for young readers who are "starting" in the world of reading and who will already advance towards the novel. And what happens if those readers stay there? The comic by itself already has a cultural value, there is this classist idea in which comics tend to be despised for being a means of mass or popular culture and without a doubt we have to defeat it. I was amused to make a couplet comic, because both popular media have been very mistreated. I thought of combining both things: a comic about copla, mixing both elements of popular culture.

-But this is not a comic to use, it has both fiction and inclusions of experts that support the story.

-There is a balance. When you deal with the life of a person you haven't gotten to know, you don't know what her character was like or what she was like. It was a situation of great respect for me to give voice to someone I had never met, in the end it is a very big responsibility. For this, the fictional part, the narrative thread, is compensated with the opinion of experts who clarify what the character does or says.

-There are three readings, her biography, her inclusion with the experts and a third line that I have not been able to perceive, will you reveal it to me?

-They are the pink pages, if you read them independently they form another story. In this case, it is an attempted rape suffered by the artist as soon as she arrived in New York. It is a book that requires several readings, I played with the fact that the reader could discover it or not.

-How did the idea of ​​these three readings arise?

-I did not want to make a biography to use, as a graphic narrator it was not interesting to me. I was interested in making a book that had combined and different narratives, and that the reader was also able to read them. A biography can be very boring, it always starts when the artist is born and ends when she dies, I wanted to do something different. I was looking for something more dynamic, to escape from the traditional biography. In fact, I would tell you that I am not considering doing a biography of another historical figure, at least for now, as it requires a great deal of effort in documentation. I prefer to dedicate myself to lighter products for now.

-Would you say that the documentation has been your headache?

-Totally. You don't know how happy I was to find out the dates she had been in the United States. It was somewhat difficult to locate but luckily I managed it, and all thanks to a database they have of all the plays that have been shown on Broadway throughout history. That list included El gato montés and from there I knew how to place Piquer in its corresponding period.

Doña Concha and her temperament

-It is no mystery that Concha Piquer was a person with a lot of character... Weren't you afraid of coming face to face with something you didn't like about her?

-Constantly, I fought a bit with the feeling of saying: “I don't want to find many bad things about her”, that scared me a little, it was a rather curious experience.

-Can you tell us about some of those “bad” anecdotes?

What surprised me the most was when she said that she was stung by some dancers and threw them down the stairs. She had a lot of temper, well rather bad milk. She came from stealing potatoes and having had a very hard childhood, she went up in smoke to her head, that's clear, but she is a character that despite the shadows she has, we have never been able to recognize her lights.

-Would you say that her character is marked by her environment?

-She came from Broadway and grew up in an extremely professional environment. When she arrives in Spain she experiences a very strong change. She was coming from something that worked very well to something where people were much more relaxed. However, in Spain if you had a company in your charge or you got a little character or it was impossible to move forward. At that time, Piquer worked with 30 other people, most of them men, or she acted like a rottweiler or it was very difficult to make people respect her. However, despite her mood, I do feel that compassion for her. Despite how brave she was, I think she has been judged very badly, the passage of time has tried to relegate her to something very seedy. She was a character who contributed a lot to Spanish culture and to whom we have not done her the justice she deserves, not even remotely.

-Considering the public opinion of the moment in which she lived... no one has ever been on her side...

-I even found documentaries that justify the relationship between Piquer and the Franco regime, but this has been widely denied by both her biographer and her family. There is one thing that also happens in Spain and that is that all the Spanish people are judged for having lived with Franco. Many of these people had to go on with their lives despite a war, rebuild themselves and continue with their lives despite the presence of Franco. Being in the Franco regime does not make you a Francoist, not everyone who lived in Spain at that time was a Francoist… it is absurd! Among all the folkloric Concha Piquer is not a person who was especially affiliated with the regime, she in fact sent a check when she had to send it and she ignored it. She complied but it wasn't an over the top thing, and she tried to wriggle out whenever she got the chance.

Francoism and copla

-Why do you think that the Franco regime was interested in being associated with the copla?

-Because the copla was music that represented the unity of Spain. It had that somewhat flamenco-like sound, it was sung in Spanish... so it was music that suited Franco well. The copla was defined as such in the 1940s, and the definitive form of the copla emerged after the civil war when Concha Piquer joined Quintero Leon and Quiroga and formed a team to put on the performance of Ropa tendida.

-Recently in Culturplaza we addressed the issue of the dismissal of times that have not been lived. How the new generations see with new eyes stages that perhaps for our parents or grandparents have been experienced in a very different way... Do you think that the same thing has happened in this story?

-I can approach the character of Concha Piquer because I have not lived through the Franco regime, nor the transition. I was born in full democracy and therefore I am able to approach Doña Concha without any of the prejudices that people who have been in previous generations have had, that is why I give her another reading. The Franco regime has been a burden both for the copla and for Concha Piquer and it is necessary that we return to these characters and give them a new approach, that frees them of this weight, to read them in a different way.

-Yes, but in a certain way, since it is a biographical work, you have to take advantage of that “weight”.

-The copla is not Franco's music, period. This is something that I had to deal with almost at institutional levels. When they gave me the scholarship from the Spanish academy, the first thing they asked me from the court was why I wanted to live the life of Concha and not that of Miguel de Molina, who was a man who had been exiled, and I told them that two reasons: First, because she is a woman, and as a woman I consider that she has been very invisible compared to Miguel de Molina. And second, because I think the idea of ​​exile has been romanized as something positive to show someone's politics, but there were many people who had to stay and continue with their lives, and do what they had to do to continue. Probably Concha would have many contradictions and hers more and hers less than hers but she is a character that has never been vindicated, and also she has always been associated with something very seedy and very cool, when it is not like that at all . Through new readings we can change that, through critical approaches, the copla belonged to Concha Piquer, and now it's time for it to be ours too.

-Then what was Concha's role with respect to the regime?

-I consider that for her the couplet was like a way to hack the system. Apparently the copla is a music that is faithful to the regime but deep down it is telling stories of marginalized women, prostitutes, lovers, people who are in the suburbs... it is not at all the speech of a woman faithful to her husband or anything of that. In principle, the protagonists are strong women who confront their husband or lover, who live a very liberated sexuality... La Piquer sang these lyrics without censoring them, in these cases she preferred to sing the songs as they were and pay fines for a matter of dignity : On the one hand to annoy and on the other for not changing the original lyrics.

-And before closing Concha Piquer's trunk… Can you tell us what's inside?

-A lot of work and talent, without a doubt.