You began your professional career as a draughtsman, continued as a decorator and it was then that you entered the world of comics, to finally establish yourself as an illustrator. How did you progress during each of those periods to reach your final vocation?

It's very simple. When you are little and you like drawing, people say things to you like "painters only become famous when they're dead, son, and meanwhile they die of starvation". They sort of put the pressure on you, force you to choose the path that will earn you a living doing things that you don't want to do.

I thought that something related to drawing could be draughtsmanship, but after two years I was sick of technical drawing.

So then people started talking to me about decoration as something a bit more creative and I started to work in that field. I stayed for several years, because in the end it's a world where you can earn money, but got fed up with it too.

After a few years in decoration I started painting as a hobby. I did a few exhibitions, and everything I earned from decoration I spent on painting, either buying canvases and materials or preparing exhibitions.

Later, since I wasn't already a comic fan, I discovered Totem publishers, the albums by Enki Bilal, Moebius and others, reflecting the changes which arose from May 68 and I thought it was really good. All those people said things as well as drawing, as went a lot further than painting. So then I thought that this was the right path.

I left decoration and I shut myself at home, when I already had a young son, and that provoked serious questions within me, because I thought that I was harming my family. But I couldn't fight it and I started making comics, influenced by my previous painting phase, very detailed, very worked - a comic where repeating the same character in each sketch was a chore. It was a twelve-page story and it took me three or four months to produce, and that was working long hours and at night. I was happy but it also made me suffer.

The next stage was in the Zaragoza Comic Fair where Rafa Martínez came up to me and said, "You're Royo". He had recognised me from my work and when I confirmed his suspicion he said, "You're not a comic artist. You're an illustrator. Do five things for me and bring them by Norma one day".

In the same month I made five science fiction illustrations and I took them to him. They were published and began to sell. He immediately asked for more and not even two months had gone by when I got a commission from England and a bit later another from the USA.

In less than a year I was in the American market. They paid me well and everything was working out.

And that's how I started. I felt good doing the work. Every illustration was different, every time I set up the drawing board it was a new concept, a new design, everything was new and it was then that I forgot about painting, decoration and everything else.

In your latest book you talk about drawing as a window through which you can see everything that you would not be able to see in any other way. What do you mean by that?

In the end, an illustrator, someone dedicating to producing images, recreating dreams or different lives. That's why you can spend so many years in a profession like this and still be in love with it, because every time you put the white paper in from of you, you go to a different world, with all its history, its horizons, its decoration, its sky, its sun, its night, its clothes, its characters. You are living a different world. Even though you are only there for a week, you are inside that world, and when you come out of it you need time to readjust.

All of us who are involved in this world are in love with it, and since you love so much what you do, you end up submerging yourself in your creation.

That's what happened to me. Now I am managing to organise myself but before, when I was working on a complicated cover, that took me two weeks, I didn't go out, I didn't see anyone and sometimes I didn't even get undressed. I slept on the sofa so I could get up without feeling showered or refreshed, and I didn't even wash. Until I had finished, nothing existed.

I'm pretty much over that now, but that's how I lived for the two or three years. My life was what was on the paper, and nothing else existed.

How have the windows developed since your childhood up until now?

The truth is that even if I'm still in love with the profession, at least now I have the feeling that I exist. There are a few years where you don't exist, when you were just a pencil holder and a couple of paintbrushes, years when you only wanted to discover new worlds every day and your only Windows were in drawing.

Now, sometimes you get fed up, and you decide that it is you who needs a walk on the beach, not the character on the paper.

Now, sometimes I close the windows on the paper to be able to enjoy the real ones, the Windows in the real world.

What did Luis draw as a child?

The same as the rest: little animals. Whatever kids tend to draw: rhinoceroses, giraffes and my own kind of heroes. They weren't like Superman, because I didn't read comics. They were more like safari hunters, things like that.

When did you find your penchant for drawing women? How did you arrive at that?
As a boy I loved drawing girls. My sister was good at drawing and it was the time of the female romantic comics. I drew lots of princesses and female characters that I copied from my sister.

Later, I remember that at school, on more than one occasion, when I was around seven or eight, the teacher caught me drawing a girl.

The other boys in the class asked me to draw girls with their breasts showing, and at that time of constant repression, I was caught more than once. I even drew girls on the blackboard, when the teacher went out.

What did the first compilation work mean for Luis?

The first one was made after several years of Rafa Martínez insisting that I should do an album, but since everything was going well and I didn't have a clear concept, I kept putting it off. It took a while and it was just a compilation of previous works. When it came out, I thought it was just like a souvenir for me. I was concentrating on the commissions and on my own work which was being published in various magazines and I wasn't thinking about books.

I was surprised at how successful it was and it was then that I thought about doing a second book. I put a lot of tender loving care into the second one and I proposed a specific line, a colour, a world. I did new images for the book, which was Malefic, and it worked much better.

Of all your compilations, which do you feel is most personal?

Malefic, because most of the illustrations were done especially for the book, although it was later sold to different magazines. Secrets, too, but it was more like the second part of Malefic. Also III Milennium, where I introduced a change in the colours and which was an evolution.

You have to remember that illustration is a product competing in the bookshops with other kinds of images in magazines and books. In order to compete you always have to introduce an element of surprise, and that's one of the challenges.

In III Milennium I completely changed the palette, playing only with browns and dead blues.

When you look at your compilations at a distance, first there seems to be room for tenderness, and as your characters become stronger, they become more violent. What is this evolution due to?

Maybe you become increasingly sincere. When you start you think about what the market expects of you - something painters, for example, don't think about because from the star they feel themselves.

In the world of illustration there is always an evolution. You don't go into it with all your ideas sorted out, but you try to fit into the market. You try to be like, you want to be liked, because if you're not, you know you'll disappear, and what you want most is to continue in the market.

Later, when you feel accepted, you give more and reveal more of yourself. You even change your colours. At the beginning you situate yourself in the American market, which has a lot of colour, and when you feel at home, you change the palette, take colour away, use more black and try to be more provocative and if they continue to accept you, you continue to evolve.

With Prohibited Book the same thing happened. I proposed a book to Rafa Martínez exclusively containing erotic images. At the start, he didn't think it was a good idea, but I insisted on doing a small book, with the theory that, even if it didn't sell much, I didn't mind doing the work.

I saw it as a trilogy right from the start, but if it hadn't worked out, we would only have done one. When he saw the results Rafa wanted to do a fourth book but it has always been planned as a trilogy.

These are challenges that pay off, when you give everything of yourself and even though its risqué and in such a puritanical market as the American one, there are still people who accept it.

Have your illustrations ever been censored?

Some of my free creations, and I know when I'm doing them, will not sell, because they could not appear on a cover. Book interiors tend not to be censored.
The American market is very restrictive as regards sexual content and the German market is strict on violence, and there are some illustrations that will never be covers and have a lot of limitations.

It's the same as I mentioned before. At the beginning, when you start out, you limit yourself so that the market accepts you, but when you are accepted you do some illustrations because you want to, and you'll see where they end up later.

What does Luis think when countries like the USA or France put on exhibitions for a broader public, while in Spain your illustration are limited to comic lovers and illustration?
I think it's just a market situation. France and the USA are very powerful markets and the Spanish market is more limited. All of us who work in this medium are marginal. Even though we are professional in this medium and we have years of experience, we are only recognised by other professionals and not by the general public.

It's been that way for years, and I'm not going to try to change it. Those of us who do this work try to make a living from our profession, enjoy our work and not ask for too much more.

You have to be clear that this profession cannot centre itself in the market of a single country. You either have some sort of international market or you cannot survive, and when you reach the international market, you only think of the work and not which market they are aimed at.

What is the secret of your success?

The truth is I really don't know. I started to work with all the enthusiasm in the world, but I don't know. Maybe it was in the first years when the American market opened up so much to me, and my treatment of women broke with the usual aesthetic of a woman grabbed by the leg and protected by a great, victorious male hero.

On the contrary, the sort of women I like are strong women, even though they may be delicate, who have more strength in their expression than the powerful male warrior. It's possible that image fitted in the market.

If that was the case, then it was deliberate. I just drew what came to me, and I couldn't draw the frightened, protected heroine. I saw the woman, even if she wasn't as strong, as being much stronger in her facial expression.

During the early years it was Heavy Metal magazine that bought most of my free illustrations, and I suppose that it was a focus they liked.

Also in the early years I remember that I received letters from feminist organisations accusing me of using women. But when I go to conferences nowadays, I see girls holding hands, obviously lesbians, buying the Prohibited Book. I haven't changed, but the situation has. Judgements have changed from a few years ago.

How many of your glances are stolen?

A lot. It must be a professional weakness because I am always observing and taking things in: it might be the way the light shines on a hand, how someone picks up a spoon, how someone places their foot when they sit at a writing desk, how someone gives a sideways glance. You always notice what is beautiful.

How do you keep these images in your head?

I file them. For example, if I see a modern video clip (those stunning Hispanic girls who can't sing to save their lives) you notice the positions that you like. You go into the street and you see such beautiful things. You see a film and you are left with the image of one frame, you look through a magazine like Vogue and the photographs are so lovely, and you go filing it all in your mind.

Apart from women, what else do you like drawing?

I don't just like drawing women because they are women. There is something about this society I don't like and that is censorship of beauty. Beauty for most people is a detail but for me it is incredibly hard, it is aggressive, one of the most important things in the world.
It is so aggressive that the major of a town council will hang a painting of Saura because, as revolutionary as he was for his time, now he is very acceptable, but nobody would hand an illustration of a female warrior. It's much more aggressive, much harder. We live in a society where the most feared power is that of beauty.

Power only produces ugliness. Politicians only talk of ugly issues, start wars, kill people. Everything that power does is ugly and that is why there is fear of beauty.

All the Greek ideas, Greek philosophy, the culture of beauty, pleasure or sex, is the complete opposite of present day power.

Beauty is possibly the most subversive thing there is, and that's why I like it. The woman is an interpretation of beauty. One could possibly achieve it with men, but I see it like that. She is a symbol and that is why I place her in harsh, uncouth settings, where there is more contrast. It is a question of facing beauty with cold blood.

Is this confrontation what you are looking for in the Prohibited Book with the women and the monster?

If you look closely you will see that the monster is always the manipulated one, the loser. He is very big, very strong, but in the end, beauty, subtlety and delicacy are the true conquerors.

That is the game: a lot of monster, a lot of brutality, but in the end the winner and the place to find pleasure is in beauty. She is more subtle, softer, but I believe that is where victory lies and not where they would have to believe.

Which book would you like to have done the cover for? And which music CD?

There are a lot of books. I am reading one at the moment by an author I hadn't heard of. He is homosexual and narrates a series of really good short stories. Independently of his sexual orientation, I really like the way he sees love and sex.

There is a book I would really love to illustrate - Dante's Divine Comedy, a book that was illustrated by Gustavo Doré. I would like to do more up to date illustrations. It would be a nice job but it would require a lot of time.

I would like to do a cover for all the books I read. For example, I'm half way through another book which is about the Knights Templar and Leonardo da Vinci, and I'd love to do the cover for that.

There are lots of records too. I'd like to do a soloist for example, a classic that I've liked since I was young: B.B. King.

I'd also lie to do a cover for Mozart's Requiem, because that would allow me a lot of fantasy.

What challenges do you have at the moment?

At the moment I'm working on a pack of Tarot cards, something I've been doing for almost three years. It's taking a long time because I want to make sure I've got all the documentation I need. There are some beautiful Tarot packs, but they all concentrate on the artistic side and the symbolism and clues are lost.

I wanted to do a Tarot which respected the symbols, documenting it really well and reading as much as I could so that nothing was missed.

If the magician had to hold the wand with two fingers, then he should hold it with two fingers and there shouldn't be variations of that kind. And if there's one finger below, then that's where it should be and all the details should be respected.

There are seventy-two cards and when I started I didn't think much about that and that's why it's difficult because I keep having to break off.

I'm also working on a book on piercing and tattoos that we are going to publish, that we brought out as portfolios because I left it have finished, but I want to finish it off.

Projects that will soon appear include a new book called Erotic Art. It is a book with exclusively erotic content for which 10% of the illustrations are new.

Another project that we are considering, involves the same as III Milennium, la breaking with the past, the beginning of a new age. It is called Doom: The Land of the Wind.
In it I want to play a game in which the roles of illustration and text are reversed.

Illustration is considered to be an image based on text, and I want to demonstrate that this is not true. Today, illustration is often not accompanied by text at all.

Setting out with this idea, and adding it to the fact that I liked the idea of stories, this project emerged, where starting out with an illustration and not text, the image recreates a story and leads to another illustration, so that the illustration and the characters are communicated.

It would be a kind of mythology, a series of characters which intertwine in images and not through text. I am very keen on this project but it is one to which I will have to dedicate a year or two.

We are in your studio - your own space in which you surround yourself with the tools of your trade and your inspiration. When are you here? What do you think about? Or do you just think about drawing?

Before, that was true. If you had asked me that question ten years ago, I would have replied that I only thought about drawing. Nowadays I sometimes want to be a person, and go down and wander through the narrow streets (we are in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona) and look at the large number of strange shops that are here. And sometimes I just want to read.

What happens is that your projects go with you, and they sometimes appear when you least want them to, while you are having dinner, or on the beach, or with friends. But the people who love you understand you and they accept that.

How much of your success is due to the sacrifice of those around you?

A lot, because nearly everyone loves what I do. The people around you pay the price.

Not content with illustration, you have also dabbled in sculpture. Will you continue along that path?

It was a test and I really enjoyed it, but I don't know the materials and that makes it complicated. I loved making figures, but I couldn't find a material that would become completely hard. It's kind of delicate and that's why it's in the glass case.

But it's a lovely world. If I had time i would do more. Like painting on canvas - something that I used to do during the time when I did decoration. Now I am going back to the easel, putting things vertically, although not everything. But when I am drawing on the table, I like going to the easel, make a few marks on the canvas and then go back to the table. I'm really keen now on using different supports.

How would you define art?

People make it very complicated. Since I also had my period of exhibitions, although I never sold anything - well, maybe I sold ten in all the time I was painting - I really lived the world of painters, artists, creators, creative people. Nor do I think that it is their fault, but society has decided to create a halo around these creative things and we have created categories, files...this is art...this is craft...

You start to realise that brilliant things are made in many different media, and there are some very mediocre things in fields which are traditionally considered to be art. It's as simple as that.

Sometimes a videoclip can surprise you and sometimes you see a film that has got nothing to do with Art, although they say film is the seventh art. The same happens with books or with painting.

I got rid of those categories a long time ago, and I only care about what interests me. I don't care what the medium is, if it says something interesting or shows me something new, then for me it's Art.