Cantabrian dragons, transvestite elves and goddesses who speak Basque: Spanish mythology is reinvented | Culture

Foreign mythologies such as Greek and Nordic mythologies have filled pop culture with frames of reference that are well established in our minds. Greek gorgons, vampires or dragons may appear again and again, but we always know, no matter how different, their rules. Bram Stoker and JRR Tolkien even managed to make their versions of Dracula or the elves referents in the subconscious. And throughout Marvel, many think that Loki was always Thor’s brother. On the other hand, traditionally the Spanish film has not transferred its monsters to epics. A situation that in recent times filmmakers like Paul Urkijo and different writers and illustrators passionate about fantasy are trying to reverse, who are deconstructing national pagan legends through contemporary codes and references.

“What pushed me to use these figures is not to divulge, but to read something that I had not read for our characters: adventures,” explains GG Lapresa, writer of The hunt for the last ojáncano, first story in the book Alter Cantabria (Ed. Cerbero) and example of how northern Spanish folklore is modernized in tone, formats (comic, cinema, role-playing games) and characters. For a long time, Lapresa’s reference to Cantabrian creatures and myths was simply an illustrated map that he hung in his school, and possibly in the rest of the classrooms in Cantabria. There were trentis, witches and a snake dragon. Almost two decades later, that childhood memory crossed his mind: what if the gigantic ojáncano that appeared there was just a version of someone who believed he had seen that fabled monster in the forest and then told it in the town? A subjective illustrated chronicle from someone who had never seen it. Mythology is, after all, a word-of-mouth story that changes depending on who tells it. It was time to stop taking this immutable map for granted and deconstruct the monster to adapt the legends of the area to the current world. Lapresa wanted to give another personality and appearance to that one-eyed giant from the Cantabrian forests that crossed the landscapes of his childhood, but not the collective imagination.

Not just the monster. In her story, the one who faces the giant is a 60-year-old ranger from Liébana. “She represents my mother, my aunt… she was a protagonist that she had not seen either,” Lapresa emphasizes. Next to her, a trenti, a mischievous and very handsome elf, cross-dressed and who does not stop flirting with whoever he meets, like a couple of very sexual and polygamous tomb explorers. The elf soon became readers’ favorite character.

“A bestiary is very beautiful, but when you read a novel, watch a series or a movie with tension and identification, that is when you take root in knowledge. We need fictional stories,” supports the Valencian Clara Díes, that has united a group of authors in Get out of the wayanthology queer of classic fairy tales for all audiences, this time based on Spanish mythology in general, with the country’s languages ​​and recognizable landscapes.

Both propose that entertainment is the best formula to popularize mythology, as demonstrated by the hundreds of Hercules that have appeared on our television. “I grew up with Greek myths, and it was strange to think: why don’t I know the ones here?” Dies, 28, recalls. His hobby began with the challenge of illustrating one character a day, and from that the 33 characters The bestiary of earth and ink: “Reading about a Welsh worm does not have the same effect on an Asturian as reading about its snake. He could have drawn hundreds, since our mythology is not homogeneous, because Spain is not.”

“Reinterpreting mythology is vital. By telling a story today someone is already building and evolving their vision. It is a reflection of an always changing culture,” says Dies, pointing out another movement: “There is a very diverse and inclusive community of folklore followers. It is a safe place for LGTBQ people, because the mythological narrative is a space to explore readings such as what otherness is; what it means to be a monster and what happens if you consider that perhaps you are not; how we define normality; the transformation of the monster into a princess… The voyages of discovery while forming a family are very recognizable, and the mermaid is an icon trans. Those narratives, sometimes not at all subtle, have always been there. Doing it in Spain is finding your space in your own culture, and not just in the foreign one.” That’s how he does it too the role play Isphanyaanother heir to the cachava and beret wave, and the comic Taxusby Isaac Sánchez.

“Everything that has a name exists,” said the moral of the epic film Irati, where Paul Urkijo delved into Basque mythology, much better preserved. The centerpiece was the legend of a lamia (duck-legged woman) and the proto-king Eneko. The comic inspired him The Irati cycle and above all the memories of the landscapes of his childhood. “Mythology has to mutate every day. The structure of the stories has a base, but the values ​​change. In the end they are just stories to tell our world, a mirror”, which for Urkijo included respecting Basque: “I was very stubborn, because it is authentic. If we watch Korean series, why not in one of our languages?

In your hands, Irati It was an allegory of climate change that had Mari, goddess of the Basque mountains, at its epicenter. The mythology expert and comic book writer about witches and giants Aritza Bergara (in whose latest book she adapts monsters with artificial intelligence) remembers that in Euskadi “it is the unusual case that the main deity, that personification of the earth, is a woman, because patriarchy did not prevail, at least until Christian customs went against paganism.” Urkijo was interested in an androgynous vision of the goddess. Something that is not unique to the tradition. “In Leitza (Navarra) the Olentzero, or Orantzaro, is non-binary, and its gender is changing,” recalls Bergara: “That story sounds almost more modern than other contemporary choices, such as turning the Olentzero into someone kindly similar to Santa Claus and put a woman, Mari Domingi, at his side who ends up becoming ‘the wife of’. Another conversion has led to witches being represented in many stories today as marginalized, harassed and heroines, and not so much as villains.

Urkijo, who is working on new scripts about mythology, envied how global audiovisual media increasingly relies on folklore, and points to “folkhorror of The witch and Polish mythology in The Witcher”. Lapresa also took this last saga, which has triumphed in literature, television and video games, as an influence: “He was basically a whore freelancer fighting monsters and his language is modern,” a code that he replicated in his stories, full of jokes: “They use deliberately current tacos. It’s an uchronia, but it’s part of what I want to convey.”

The references of Alter Cantabria —who releases his second and last book this summer—, more focused on pop culture, are also atypical for epic: The Avengers (to build the universe story by story and that in the end they meet), video games Bloodborne, Doom or uncharted, Dungeons and DragonsAgatha Christie’s novels… but also Galdós de Santillana del Mar’s descriptions for his ghost story.

They tell it without forgetting Barandiarán, Manuel Llano, Pío Baroja or Enric Valor, whom they quote, and without whom the monsters of each town would not have survived, especially in the north. Why haven’t they gone further? Dies responds: “Spain faced 40 years of a dictatorship that sold a homogeneous version of Catholic folklore. There was an enormous cultural variety due to our geographical diversity, but the conservation work was overshadowed.” The objective now is not only to preserve them, but to take advantage of their underexploited possibilities for adventure. Because there are still the gentiles, the lamias, the old woman, the fairies of the lakes… watching over how we treat the world. Changing as society changes.

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