Aeneas of the 21st century: narratives of the migratory crisis in comics published in Spain (2014-2019)

Abstract

The migrant crisis that has affected Europe since at least 2014 is a topic of interest for the media in countries that receive the largest number of migrants, mainly Spain, Italy and Greece. There is an abundance of journalistic reports and films about the phenomenon, perhaps because these are means of wide dissemination. Nonetheless, they can be considered approximations within the framework of audiovisual representations of social phenomena. This article focuses on a less-attended medium, the comic, in one particular country, Spain, which in 2019 received more than 23,000 migrants. A set of 13 titles has been located: published between 2014 and 2019, these reflect on migration through stories that emphasize concepts such as flight, border and confinement. This article analyzes these comics from a semiotic point of view to define the iconography, the literary expression and the narrative techniques that are employed to represent migration.