Francisco de Asís de Borbón’s Identity Constructed by the Media

The mass media represents images of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, and Queer (lgbtq) community that persists in the social imagination over time, and therefore shapes the processes involved in the development of personal identities. Francisco de Asís de Borbón’s presence in the satirical print Los Borbones en pelota represented dissenting masculinities from the 19th century. The king is present in 36 out of the 102 pictures that make up this collection. The hypothesis states that it is possible to draw parallels between the representations in the strips, Francisco’s gender dissidence, and the current informational and academic publications about his life. The 36 pictures have been analyzed for the purposes of combining primary and secondary sources concerning Francisco de Asís’ biography, marked by a “queer” methodological‒theoretical framework and content analysis. To conclude, it can be inferred that the strips encouraged stereotypes that were part of Francisco’s biography, even in more recent publications. Despite the changing contexts and wills; conflicting ideas and a certain degree of general ignorance persist as markers of the king consort’s identity constructed by the media, making it necessary and rewarding to carry out analyses focusing on these profiles.