This presentation was made by members of the Sectorial Alejandro Casasola (president), Oscar Valiente (vice-president and project coordinator) and Sara Jotabé (member for equality), together with the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun and the general director of Books, Comics and Reading, María José Gálvez.
But what is a White Paper? White papers are documents published by governments to inform legislative bodies or public opinion on a specific topic or issue. And this is the intention of the initiative launched by the Comic Sector with this ambitious project: to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the comic industry in our country, and thus become a useful tool for the design of cultural policies of the various institutions and public administrations.
The Comic Sectorial, formed by people and entities from different professional areas that make up the sector, aims to mediate with public administrations, as well as to collaborate with other cultural groups to promote actions that contribute to the improvement of the comic sector and industry.
In the Libro Blanco del Cómic en España we can find information about authors, publishers, the state of the industry, current festivals, contests, etc. Everything to make it possible for our profession to improve.
In recent years, several actions have been taken to give comic books the visibility and importance they deserve. One of the most important and significant was the declaration of March 17 as the National Comic and Comic Book Day. Another noteworthy action is the recent change of name of the general directorate of the Ministry of Culture in charge of books and reading to Dirección General del Libro, del Cómic y de la Lectura (General Directorate of Books, Comics and Reading). In addition, the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts was recently awarded posthumously to the great Carlos Pacheco, becoming the first person in the world of comics to be awarded this medal.
At Joso we train great artists of the Ninth Art. The industry must be nurtured so that we can all enjoy their talent. This is one of the issues we discussed a few months ago at the meeting we held with the former Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta and the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni about the Youth Cultural Voucher. You can read this previous news here:
We applaud and appreciate any initiative to improve the comics sector.
