Pablo Auladell

Pablo: Some of my books come from publisher commissions and some books come from within. ‘La feria abandonada’ (The abandoned carnival) belongs to this latter category. A book which for years was just the outline of an idea in one of my folders. Of course, even in that initial stage, the project was called ‘La feria abandonada’. In my case, the title is always the first thing that comes to mind – the first thing that needs to come up in order to begin working with a guideline, because what is not named does not exist.

I finally decided to start it, fed up with the poor quality of the supposedly poetic texts that publishers asked me to illustrate. Until then, I had only written texts in my comics, but never in my picture books. I had the basic idea and outline of the book and some written texts, but decided to accept the help of two old friends – the journalist, Rafa Burgos, and the poet, Julián López Medina – because I thought that a variety in the style of the texts would enrich the project.

I gave them an initial skeleton of the book and a few instructions on the features that the texts should have. They began to send me what they were writing and I rigorously approved and selected, attentive to the music of the book and the claims that the book itself demanded as an autonomous and mysterious animal.

Meanwhile, I was creating the illustrations. The biggest job was to build and perfect a suitable technique for what I wanted: Mediterranean images, minerals, with a mural texture, with imagery based on Spanish painting and the popular festivals of Spain and not on the freak shows of the more Anglo-Saxon model.

So, for a year, we carried on arming and disarming, building and demolishing and fitting together the pieces of this sudoku of melancholy: this almost middle-aged book, where I believe my imagery has collected during these last few years and which expresses the main feeling accompanying me during this time... the conviction of witnessing the collapse of a world, the disappearance of many things that I always considered safe.

I am convinced that it was a good move to collaborate with Rafa and Julián instead of writing all the texts myself. In doing so, the book has gained nuances: the texts by Julián are more philosophical, conceptual, sharp; mine are essentially lyrical; those by Rafa have a more direct tone and relate to very specific, recognisable, and everyday things.

It now seems very faraway, almost unreal: the mornings at my desk, drawing all this with a suicidal enthusiasm and very simple tools (a pencil, a few pastel colours and something to scratch and sculpt the charcoal).

Bob Dylan says that when he listens to his songs, they seem to be created by someone else. And I feel something similar, now looking at all those illustrations and those clean and well groomed texts in their analogue and portable box, ready to communicate, or not, with you. Left behind are dozens of failed drawings, texts that didn't find their place, negotiations with publishers and some disappointment.

And it has been quite some time since I, at least, have worked on any other stories... and so this book has come to resemble itself and, you guessed it, is another ‘feria abandonada’.

Illustrations © Pablo Auladell. Post translated by Gengo and edited by dPICTUS.

Buy this picturebook

La feria abandonada /
The abandoned carnival

Pablo Auladell, Rafa Burgos & Julián López Medina

Barbara Fiore Editora, Spain, 2013

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Places where we'll never go again... The people who couldn't accompany us, are they not, perhaps, an ‘abandoned carnival’ – the remains of the piñata and the dance, the silent carousel where now only the suns of time revolve?

Beneath the broken banners, there are now other attractions, other quiet sleights of hand. Small bands of shadow. Broken-down jalopies going nowhere.