'Kings Day'

This two-page spread was published in the satirical newspaper O António Maria, which Rafael Bordalo founded two years earlier, introducing a major innovation in the field of Portuguese graphic arts. In this Kings Day, the artist creates an image in which the weight of the institutional monarchy is transfigured into 34 miniaturised caricatures of Portugal's kings, each of them perched atop the enormous body of Zé Povinho, portrayed here as a Portuguese Gulliver, napping comfortably on a traditional halberd, a symbol of his oppression.
The List of Holy Kings is accompanied by a humorous text describing each royal from Count Dom Henrique and the Founding of Portugal to the then current-day Dom Luís, who offers his son a leg up as the latter struggles to clamber up the giant. With the interrogative caption 'arise?' the artist points to the hope of a future free from the abuses of the Monarchy, revealing his sympathy towards the republican ideals then in vogue.