SPAIN

Anonymous, “Pobre España” (Poor Spain), La Flaca September 12, 1872

La Flaca, a weekly known for its scathing ridicule of political, military and church leaders, was one of the first Spanish periodicals to include double-page color lithographs.  In “Pobre España” politicians and military figures are shown as scavenging birds that pick at the ravaged and limp personification of Spain. The insatiable vultures recall the eagle that persecuted Prometheus and pecked at his liver after Zeus bound him to a rock. The birds embody the power struggle and social unrest that characterized the decade following la gloriosa – the 1868 revolution that overthrew the Spanish monarch Isabella II and resulted in the Third Carlist War. 

Return to Abusing Power introduction; return to exhibit home page