Spanish Sticker Album: I am the youngest of a family of 7 siblings. I became a Star Wars collector in 1981, right after The Empire Strikes Back. The first figure of my collection was a Sandperson that my eldest brother gave me, and it was the first of MANY Star Wars toys that I collected until 1985, all of them bought in Spain (and a few toys I bought in Mexico where I lived in 1986).

I donīt think that I saw A New Hope when it was released in Spain, because if I had seen it in a theater, I would remember, and I donīt. Anyway, the movie was very familiar to me. Let me explain why. All these years I have remembered a Star Wars collectible from my childhood that I never imagined I could find again, and I did! Right after the release of Star Wars in Spain, under the title LA GUERRA DE LAS GALAXIAS, there was a company called PACOSA DOS which manufactured a licensed sticker album. Well, maybe I should call them "stamps" instead of stickers because you had to use glue to stick them on the album.

Sticker albums were very popular in Spain, especially those based on japanese cartoons. In 1978 I remember there was another sticker album that I had. It was from the manga cartoon MAZINGER-Z. I was 5 or 6 years old, but I have very clear memories of both albums. Every Spanish kid would kill to complete each and every sticker album, of each and every cartoon series which was popular at the moment. Even today they are very popular in my country.

My older brothers, who were 18, 16, and 14 years old respectively, collected the Star Wars stickers. The album was one of the first (if not the first) album based on a film, and not on a cartoon series. And it was very succesful. The stickers were sold in the traditional packs, and some of them were very hard to find.

The album narrates the whole movie, scene by scene, in 187 stickers. I LOVE IT!!! It has some names translated into spanish, like CETRESPEO (C3PO), ERREDOSDEDOS (R2D2), SOLDADO DE CHOQUE (Stormtrooper), etc. And the LA GUERRA DE LAS GALAXIAS logo on the front is fantastic, isnt it? With the sentence COLLECTION OF STICKERS FROM THIS SENSATIONAL MOVIE.

That is why A New Hope was familiar to me. As a kid, this album was my first contact with the Star Wars world. I read it over and over again. I saw ESB and ROTJ in the cinema, but when I first saw Star Wars on video, I couldnt remember if I had actually seen it as a kid in a theater, or if it was the sticker album I remembered. I am 90% sure it was the sticker album :-).

So, as a Spanish Star Wars collector, you can imagine how important this album is to me. It represents the prehistory of Star Wars collecting for me. It is the first Star Wars collectible ever to exist in my country (aside from the theatrical posters). I am so happy that I could find it 23 years later, along with all 187 of the original stickers.

Description: Gonzalo Diaz-Faes
Photo: Gonzalo Diaz-Faes
From the collection of Gonzalo Diaz-Faes