Sometimes it is necessary to mentally take a trip to the past to realize how Spain has changed in recent decades. It is not only a matter of material and economic well-being, but also of values, sensitivities and social revolutions. The emails that two readers sent me last week in relation to the endearing pastime of The 8 Errors, which La Vanguardia has been publishing since 1977, are proof of this.
“I am a daily reader of La Vanguardia and, among others, every day I play The 8 Errors. I don't understand how today, Friday August 26, they have allowed to publish this totally racist drawing. Are you racists?” asked Manuel Ribas. Reader Chiara Arroyo also wrote to me to express her indignation at the cartoon that day: “It is inadmissible for La Vanguardia to publish an offensive cartoon because it is racist. I expect a rectification”.
The drawing in question showed a white man, dressed as an explorer, fording a river by jumping over the heads of three black men who are up to their chins in water.
The first thing to clarify is that, despite the fact that it was published last week, the drawing in question is not current but dates from 1982 and that, after timely warning from readers, it was removed from the hobbies section of the page web and will not appear again in the print edition.
The legendary cartoonist Jean Laplace, author of The 8 Errors, died in 2018, at the age of 84, but the newspaper's readers continue to enjoy his original hobbies thanks to the archive available to La Vanguardia after decades of collaboration with him (currently , the original date of publication is indicated in the upper corner of the bullets).
In the more than four decades that have passed since that cartoon was published, we have all learned to identify what certain points of view and cultural expressions inadvertently distill.
Some cartoons from Tintin, the Tarzan films or the song by Cola-Cao from the "little black man from tropical Africa" reflect attitudes that are not typical of the current time, but that does not invalidate the fact that they were enjoyed innocently at that time.
Something similar happens with this drawing in particular. I think it is fair to point out that this is an exception that does not at all reflect the spirit of Laplace's 8 Errors. Its long-nosed characters, who find themselves in original and surprising situations, won over readers 45 years ago and today they are part of the essence of the newspaper that is passed down from generation to generation, since for many readers it is a daily habit shared with little ones in the house.
