La Traca (Spanish: The Firecracker) was a satirical weekly magazine which was headquartered in Valencia, Spain. It existed in two periods between 1884 and 1892 and between 1909 and 1939. The magazine sold half a million copies making it the first satirical magazines with this circulation in Spain.[1] Its record was broken in the late 1976 when Interviú sold one million copies.[2]
History and profile
Cover page of La Traca (1917)
La Traca was launched in 1884.[2] Its founders were Manuel Lluch Soler and Luis Cebrian Mezquita.[3] It came out weekly and was based in Valencia.[2] It held a republican political stance.[2] The magazine was folded in 1892 and was restarted by Vicente Miguel Carceller in 1909.[2][3] It was subject to frequent censorship during its existence and was permanently closed in 1939.[1][2] The reason for its closure was the publication of the caricatures of the Fascist dictator Francisco Franco.[3] Its editor Vicente Miguel Carceller was arrested due to these caricatures and hanged in June 1940 due to his anti-Fascist leaning.[3]
The magazine featured satirical material written in the Valencian dialect.[2] In 1931 the language of the magazine was switched to Spanish after which it sold more than half a million copies.[2][3] One of the contributors of La Traca was the illustrator Gaspar Méndez Álvarez whose anticlerical and political writings were published from 1928.[4]
^ abcdefghAntonio Laguna Platero; Francesc-Andreu Martínez Gallego (June 2019). "The satirical press and the struggle for cultural hegemony in Spain: a case study on La Traca, 1884-1938". Culture & History Digital Journal. 8 (1): 015. doi:10.3989/chdj.2019.015. S2CID199353146.
