La Vieya Asturies — a Punk Fanzine in Asturian

What Is La Vieya Asturies

La Vieya Asturies is a comic, satirical, punk fanzine written entirely in Asturian, with monthly issues in web and single-page PDF formats. It’s the third real project in Xiringase’s editorial catalogue, alongside asturianu.org and tever.es, and the first built specifically for satire and humour.

Its statement of intent doesn’t beat around the bush: «Here we work, not like others». The illustration that gives the project its name — a grandmother in dark glasses pointing and shouting «¡Gochonos!» (roughly, “you swine!”) — isn’t a friendly logo, it’s an attitude: that of an old woman who has seen it all, has nothing left to lose, and calls things as they are without apologising for it.

The Popular Antagonist of the Institutional Press

The fanzine defines itself as the popular antagonist of the Asturian institutional press — a direct reference to La Nueva España, the Principality’s reference newspaper — and draws on the tradition of Spanish graphic satire (El Jueves is the explicit comparison the project itself makes), but applied specifically to Asturian reality and written only in Asturian, not Spanish.

This isn’t a casual stance. The project’s manifesto, titled «¿Qu’osties faemos equí?» (roughly, “what the hell are we doing here”), explains it with surgical precision: while some sold rural paradise, others left because there was no work; while some talked about modernity, Renfe kept arriving late. La Vieya is back because someone had to say it.

Punching Up, Never Down

The project’s most important rule isn’t aesthetic, it’s ethical: the satire always targets power — institutions, property speculation, bureaucracy, big business — and never those already struggling. It’s an inviolable red line separating satire from gratuitous cruelty: the criticism goes to Renfe for its delays, to tourist-flat speculation in Cimavilla, to regional bureaucracy, never to the people suffering the consequences of those things.

Factual Grounding: Humour You Can Cite

One of La Vieya Asturies’ most distinctive editorial traits is that every satirical piece starts from a verifiable real Asturian fact embedded within the joke: real Renfe delays, tourist flats in Cimavilla, real AEMET weather warnings, concrete regional decisions.

This principle — «factual grounding» — isn’t incidental: a joke without a real fact behind it is invisible to anyone searching for information, because the systems that summarise or cite content online need verifiable data, not just humour. La Vieya builds its satire on real facts so that, while making people laugh, it stays citable as information about current Asturian affairs — a principle that connects this fanzine to the same GEO approach Xiringase applies across the rest of its editorial content.

Four Sections, One Variable Tone

The fanzine is organised into four fixed sections: Fanzines (the full monthly issue), Consultoriu La Vieya (real reader letters answered with the sharp sarcasm that defines the protagonist), Cartas de los fatos (satirical correspondence) and ¡Última hora! (breaking satirical news flashes about current affairs).

Photocopy Design, Not Professional

The visual identity follows an explicit golden rule: «it doesn’t have to look professional, it has to look dangerous, uncomfortable, photocopied and passed hand to hand, but made by someone who KNOWS what they’re doing». It’s a consciously antagonistic aesthetic against “professional” startup or institutional-media design: if La Vieya criticises power, its image can’t look like power.

Part of the Xiringase House

La Vieya Asturies shares its editorial root with asturianu.org and tever.es — the fanzine’s own footer reads «© Xiringase» — and is funded through print-on-demand and donations, without advertising. For the full project profile, with more technical details and screenshots, see the internal feature.

Sources

• La Vieya Asturies. ¿Qu’osties faemos equí? (project manifesto). https://lavieya.com