El Jueves cover reignites Spain's black legend row

El Jueves and the cover that reopens the black legend debate

A satirical cover from the Spanish magazine El Jueves, dedicated to its seasonal special, was enough for Moctezuma's revenge, Belgium's King Leopoldo II and the magazine's public funding to collide within hours. The issue is not the cartoon itself: it is what counts as national history and who has the right to caricature it. The row turned into a clash between those who see the satire as an attack on Spain and those who point out that the English, French and Dutch did the same without anyone tearing their clothes.

What the El Jueves cover is criticised for

The trigger is a cover of the magazine's Christmas special, a format that goes for excess every year. This time, part of the audience read the content as yet another instalment of the black legend, that current that reduces Spain's history to the Inquisition and the Conquest. The accusation is nothing new: every December, when the special is published, the same ritual of outrage repeats itself.

What stands out is the leap in the argument. From a single cartoon, the debate moves to public funding, to the supposed treachery of those who defend it, and to comparisons with other colonial powers. Some argue the problem is not the satire but the framework: if the same joke comes from an Anglo media outlet, it is celebrated as British humour; if it comes from El Jueves, it becomes propaganda.

Why Leopoldo II of Belgium is mentioned

The reference to the Belgian monarch appears as a counterexample. His administration of the Congo is one of the best-documented episodes of European colonialism, and yet it rarely antiestéticatures on a satirical cover outside Belgium. The argument doing the rounds is that historical memory is applied with a different yardstick depending on the country.

It is an uncomfortable line of reasoning, and a debatable one too. Comparing empires does not exonerate any of them; at best it highlights the asymmetry of scrutiny. Those who defend the cover argue that satire is not a historical judgement but a genre with its own rules, and that mistaking a cartoon for a historiographical thesis is a category error.

The debate over the magazine's public funding

The other axis is money. Part of the discussion calls for withdrawing public funding from the publication, without even assessing its content. It is the economic version of "let them pay for it themselves", applied to a satirical magazine that has been on newsstands for decades.

The problem with that argument is that it turns any annoying cover into a budgetary matter. If the criterion is the reader's anger, the list of subsidies up for review would be endless. The underlying question —what is being funded, the magazine or the freedom to caricature— is not answered with a budget cut.

The black legend as a recurring frame

The expression black legend works as a catch-all: it covers sixteenth-century Dutch propaganda, Anglo historiography and any joke that spoils a Sunday. Using it for everything drains it of meaning.

There is an uncomfortable consensus at the bottom of all this: political satire is a right, and so is selective outrage. What does not add up is demanding the rigour of a history textbook from a humour magazine. Nobody asks a joke to be fair. Only to be funny.

With these ingredients, the December controversy is served up once again. Can anyone remember a single El Jueves cover that did not offend someone?