The “fets de Cu-Cut!” Cartooning Controversy in Catalonia

Abstract

On 25 November 1905, three hundred soldiers from Barcelona's garrison, incensed by the publication of a cartoon by Joan Junceda, attacked the offices of the Catalan satirical weekly Cu-Cut! and those of its sister daily, La Veu de Catalunya, beating employees and torching typewriters in the street. The incident, known as the “fets de Cu-Cut!,” sparked a chain of events that profoundly marked Catalan twentieth-century history. This article introduces readers to the start of the Golden Age for Catalan satirical production, and it offers a content analysis of Junceda's cartoon with a discussion of the power of cartoon humor to both reflect and shape its sociopolitical context.

Keywords:

• Catalonia
• Cu-Cut!
• humor
• political cartoons
• satirical press

Notes

¹On 30 September 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of satirical cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. This immediately provoked rioting and anti-Western demonstrations throughout the Muslim community. On 2 November 2011, following the publication of “Charia Hebdo,” a special number of the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo with Muhammad named (and depicted) as editor-in-chief, the publication's offices in Paris were firebombed. After its repeated satirical depictions of the Prophet, on 7 January 2015 gunmen forced their way into the same offices, killing twelve people.

²The disputes culminated in the magazine's principal cartoonist, Tomàs Padró, and a key contributor, Conrad Roure, leaving to create a rival, although equally ephemeral, publication, Lo Noy de la Mare (1866–67).

³While the continuity of the genre until the end of the Spanish Civil War is, for the most part, undisputed, I have argued that the tradition survived throughout the Franco Regime under various guises, before resuming a vital position in the cultural output that challenged the status quo of the transition to democracy (McGlade).

⁴The uprising began on 4 April 1870 and called on local residents to resist youth conscription to the Army. The rebellion lasted for five days until a state of siege was declared, during which time the bell tolled continuously.

⁵This had been formally recognized in 1837, although, on account of the frequent governmental change throughout the nineteenth century, these freedoms became increasingly restricted, particularly after 1856.

⁶In this neologism, only the written “a” enables us to distinguish between the homophonous French words translated as “difference” and “deferral.” In these terms, “Derrida advocates a mode of writing that […] incorporates multiple meanings” (Holland 117).

⁷La Veu de Catalunya was first published in January 1899 by Enric Prat de la Riba, often seen as the father of Catalanism, as a newspaper in which he could disseminate his political ideas. The publication became the mouthpiece of the Lliga and aligned itself with a powerful political elite as well as enjoying significant influence on sectors of the Catalan bourgeoisie (Socorro Arroyo 14).

⁸The irony that the civil governor was a member of the military was not lost on Francesc Cambó (110).

⁹These included those carried out on El Progresso in Valencia and El Correo de Guipúzcoa (Romero 56).

¹⁰Following its suspension in 1905, as in the case of La Campana's short-term closure in 1872, Cu-Cut!'s editor attempted to offer the publication's readers an interim solution during the ban. Bagunyà opted to adapt the less popular arts and cultural publication Garba (1905–06) to allow Cu-Cut's caustic essence to live on. No sooner had this magazine taken on Cu-Cut!'s iconic typesetting and combative style than it was shut down, and Cu-Cut! was forced to live out the rest of its sentence in silence (Solà, Cu-Cut! 9; Capdevila 7).

¹¹Titled “La música amanseix les feres,” the cartoon referred to a trip to Madrid by the Catalan Orfeó choir and depicted Lluís Millet, one of the choir's co-founders, as Orpheus entertaining a hellish audience comprising a host of symbolic animals, including Madrid's iconographic bear as well as the reptilian Madrid Press and swordfish qua Spanish Army.