Ana Penyas' Estamos todas bien: A Review

Ana Penyas, Estamos todas bien (Barcelona: Salamandra, 2018). 112 pages.

I was born twenty-five years after the Civil War ended, but was a very young eyewitness to (in the opinion of many) some of the worst years of the Francoist regime: the early 70s. For someone like my mother, born in 1936 just months into the conflict, those forty years of Fascist rule were a completely different story. Life was extremely hard – particularly in regions Franco and his collaborators chose to punish with gusto. Under Franco, women were the target of two powerful, tyrannical entities: the Spanish political version of Fascism (Francoism) and the Catholic Church, which were (and still are) solidly joined at the hip, as if they were Siamese twins.

In Estamos todas bien (which I would tentatively translate as We’re all fine, girls!) Valencian illustrator and graphic artist tells the life-story of her two grannies: Maruja and Herminia. More a homage than a proper narrative, given the constraints the graphic novel as a medium imposes upon the creator, the book seeks to be, quite understandably, a tribute, not a tale.

Penyas contrasts the past with the present of Maruja’s daily routine: loneliness, ageing and the resulting difficulty of moving in a pedestrian-unfriendly environment are shown in the first pages. The long walk back home from the park that used to take barely a few seconds now takes her minutes. Memories mix with current events through images and voices.

Does TV make it bearable to be alone for hours at a time?

Migration in post-war Spain is another of the topics covered by Penyas. In the case of Granma Maruja, she moved from Las Navas del Marqués, north of Madrid, to Gestalgar, a village in inner Valencia, an excursion to which remains one of my earliest memories as a child.

With friends like these, who needed enemies?

Penyas is a very subtle narrator, allowing her drawings to tell the reader as much as the reader wants to find out. See for instance the example below, where Maruja is being harassed by one of the bar’s regulars. The work is boring, the customers (all male, of course) are sexual predators, while the photograph of the genocidal dictator who happens to be Head of State “por la gracia de Dios” presides over the scene. Below, the dreary view from the bar reinforces the dispiriting outlook for a young woman like Maruja.

It may sound like an urban myth these days, but many people went to Madrid to make sure the dictator was truly dead. He was indeed, but his adherents and followers remain conspicuously active. At my grandmother's shop, by midday that day all the cava had been sold. Some celebrations!

For her part, Herminia also migrated with her husband and children to Valencia, the city, from Quintanar del Rey, a small village in Cuenca. With a large family to look after, they struggled to make ends meet. The dream of returning to the countryside slowly faded into oblivion, while one of her daughters became involved in left-wing politics fighting through outlawed newspapers against the agonising regime and the dictator.

Estamos todas bien has won two significant awards, the National Comic Award in 2018, and the 10^th FNAC-Salamandra Graphic Novel Award in 2017. As a heartfelt tribute to the two grannies who must have helped her become who she is now, the book is simply astounding. As a narrative, however, it lacks punch. The story meanders between the nostalgic and the denunciation of the extremely discriminatory culture against which the two women must have battled through the years. It is, moreover, a sad state of affairs that a neo-Francoist political party has resurfaced (which goes to prove Franco has never really “died”) and attacks women’s rights (as well as those of migrants, linguistic minorities, the LGBT community and others).

The guy at the bar in front of you could be a murderous criminal one day... the one behind you by the bottle of brandy is a genocidal dictator. Where would you go?

An enjoyable book, no doubt. Perhaps a much longer version would have enhanced the story and the message, although it would have made the book a lot more expensive. Moltes gràcies, T. M’ha agradat moltíssim.

¡Chisss! ¡Camarero! Un par de tercios y una ración de sepia a la pancha. Ellas les hacen el gasto. Sin el bar de la esquina, la economía española estaría más hundida que el Titanic.

1 March 2023: Great news! Estamos todas bien has been published in English by Fantagraphics, translated by Andrea Rosenberg as We’re All Just Fine.