A Fine Display of Creativity and Good Humour in the New Army Calendar

Illustration by Mingote in the Army calendar (Photo:Luis Rico/Army Communication Department)

 

The army general at the presentation (Photo:Luis Rico/Army Communication Department)

The Chief of the Army Staff presents a statuette to Mr. Carlos Herrera (Photo:Luis Rico/Army Communication Department)

In a ceremony today hosted by journalist Carlos Herrera at Buenavista Palace in Madrid, Army Headquarters, the 2012 Army calendar has been presented.  Twelve cartoonists from eight national newspapers have selflessly participated in this edition to illustrate the months of the coming year, a tremendous display of creativity and good humour. 
 
In the words of Army General Fulgencio Coll, Chief of the Army Staff, with this initiative ‘we have not sought the aesthetic effect of uniting our emblem to the main mastheads of the press, but rather to pay a deeply felt tribute to the media in general’.  According to General Coll, ‘without you, our activity would remain in the shadows; you achieve that Spanish society appreciates and values us, as is so shown each month in the surveys’.  To the cartoonists, the true main protagonists of the ceremony, the Chief of the Army Staff has confessed, ‘We have been aware of how the new technologies also affect you and that you rarely coincide with each other.  This has been our great satisfaction: having served as an excuse to bring you all together’. 
 
The Chief of the Army Staff has given the floor to Mr. Carlos Herrera, who has presented the audience, month by month, to each of the collaborators in this calendar  -‘great talents of plastic and intellectual expression’-, their cartoons created expressly for the occasion and the video on how the project has been developed and undertaken.  All of them -Mingote, Máximo and  Puebla (ABC newspaper), Gallego&Rey and Ricardo (El Mundo newspaper), Forges and  Peridis (El País newspaper), L. Beard (El Periódico newspaper), Emebé+De Juan (La Gaceta newspaper), Borja Montoro and Esteban (La Razón newspaper), Toni Batllori (La Vanguardia newspaper) and Pepe Medina (Público newspaper)- have received a statuette of General Prim, as a memento and in gratitude for their altruistic collaboration with the Army.  
Also attending the presentation have been various military authorities.  Among these, the Deputy Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General  Ignacio Martín Villalaín, the commander of the Personnel Command, Lieutenant General Carlos Fernández Asensio, and the commander of the Army Logistic Support Command, Lieutenant General Luis Villanueva Barrios. On behalf of the media represented in the calendar, present have been Mr. Ramón Pérez-Maura, deputy director of ABC newspaper; Mr. José M. Crespo, director of Institutional Relations at Público newspaper; Mr. Celeste López, editor in chief of the Madrid regional office of La Vanguardia newspaper; and Mr. Pedro Zuazua, director of Communication at El País newspaper.
 
It is certain that this calendar, which may be acquired through the Armed Forces and Civil Guard Assistance Foundation, will aid more than one person to cope with the New Year with a smile on their lips.