Tintin Forums

I know that up till a few years ago Tintin albums were printed in Belgium. Do you know when exactly and why did they move it to Spain?

It might mean nothing to some, but to me it's as if they lost somthing, they are not printed at home now :-(

Look on the bright side: the books are still printed in Europe.
Tintin and Snowy will always be from Belgium, and first encouraged
me to visit this wonderful country, and then discover Belgium's
wonderful part in the history of Europe/art/culture/faith.

Maybe, they needed to expand and Spain had the facilities to do so! After all, a Tintin book is bought around the world around every 10 seconds. I learned that through a documentary in the official Tintin website!

My guess would be that reason for the move to printing in Spain was just economics. Where a book is printed has little to do with where it's published. With full colour books especially, printing will often be done in a country where costs are lower than in the publisher's own country. For decades, a lot of picture books and comic books published in the UK have been printed in Spain and Italy, presumeably because they were once two of the poorer - and thus cheaper - countries in Europe. I'd guess that the economic disparity across Europe is lessening though, and these days a lot of picture books are sent off on a disc to be printed in China. Even with the cost of shipping the books back, it's still works out cheaper than getting them printed by a UK firm.


Also, the technical method of printing Tintin books was changed quite recently. You can see the change most obviously in the glossyness of the paper and ink (not a change all of us like, but there's another thread on that somewhere!). So maybe the Belgium printers specialised in the old method of printing Tintin (and other clear line comic books), and maybe the Spanish printers are better set up for the more recent printing method. That's only a guess though.

It's also a little dismaying to see a website on the back of the albums now. It's as if to say, Tintin has to be modernized...which I can't say I'm in total favor of.
I guess it's a necessity though.

Good point Mijarka!

Someone just told me on another board that only English albums were moved to Spain, while French ones are still being Printed in Belgium. Can anyone confirm this? Do you have a French album that was printed in 2005 or later and is printed in Belgium??