V for Vivienda, V for Viñeta: Residual and Residential Politics in Spanish Comics and Graphic Novels

Abstract This article uses new economic and activist histories of Spain’s housing sector to read the representation of residential spaces in Spanish comics and graphic novels from 13, Rue del Percebe (Francisco Ibáñez, 1961) to Españistán (Aleix Saló, 2011), and La casa (Paco Roca, 2015). It examines how visual narrative art from Spain reflects continuities between housing strategy in the Franco era and its enduring effects on Spain’s economy following the 2008 crisis. The article presents a close reading of the innovative formal, narrative, and genre-specific techniques employed by Paco Roca in La casa. Its discrete sections articulate an economic and social history suturing the dictatorship period and the post-transitional democratic era, around the triadic development model (tourism-construction-financial development) pursued in Spain since the 1950s.