La Sombra del Cóndor: Graphic Novel Trilogy on Spanish Civil War Air Battles

Gerardo Balsa's graphic novel trilogy *La sombra del cóndor* recounts the fierce aerial battles of the Spanish Civil War through the eyes of two contrasting protagonists: Dieter von Moltke, a German aristocrat serving in the Luftwaffe, and Pedro Goya, a working-class Madrid anarchist and Republican eager to prove himself as a fighter pilot. The work is currently on display at this year's Comic Fair in La Massana.

Balsa, who both wrote and illustrated the series, overcame significant hurdles to bring it to fruition. After completing the first volume, the Covid-19 pandemic forced his French publisher to close, leaving him to seek a new one willing to continue from the second instalment—a challenge he described as daunting, since few editors were interested.

The trilogy sparked controversy upon release. Balsa rejects calls for impartiality, arguing that narratives often equate excesses on both sides to draw a veil over the conflict. "What we call Francoist excesses—executions, indiscriminate bombings—came directly as orders from Franco," he said. "They were not excesses but a strategy, a systematised cruelty." He acknowledges Republican oversteps, such as church burnings and priest executions, but stresses these were not government directives.

To ensure historical accuracy, Balsa drew on extensive research, including the *Atlas ilustrado de la aviación de la Guerra Civil española* by Susaeta, *Yo fui piloto de caza rojo* by Francisco Tarazona, and accounts from Spanish pilots. He relished depicting aircraft, reviving lesser-known models from Spain's emerging aviation industry, such as the Breguet XIX, Nieuport-Delage NiD 52, Mosca, and Chato. "Spain had an incipient aeronautical industry with considerable potential, produced with great effort and respectable quality," Balsa noted.

The author portrays the air war as heavily tilted toward the Francoists, who enjoyed superior air power bolstered by Italian support. Republicans faced temporary boosts, like the arrival of Soviet fighters in October 1936, but operated with a spirit of selfless sacrifice, risking their lives without expectation of reward.