They say this is the only independent press in Bulgaria.

Taken literally, that can’t quite be true. Taken structurally, it tells us what it means to be independent.

Firstly, "Прас-Прес" ("Pras Pres") is independent in a way that is deliberately polemical. Then, it occupies a rare position – it is print, not just digital; it is satirical, not investigative; it is stubbornly unaffiliated in a media landscape shaped by party lines, oligarchic ownership, and soft capture; it survives without aligning itself to a power bloc; and It uses caricature and grotesque rather than reporting. That combination is rare enough that the “only independent” slogan sticks.

What matters here is caricature. Not as illustration of a wilder kind, but an art of handling the hypertrophy of signification – when signs swell, distort, and exceed their intended meanings. Caricature works precisely at that point of excess, where power, ideology, and image can no longer hold themselves together. Including prudish moralisms.

Given this, it is virtually impossible to separate caricature from high art forms. Both operate where representation breaks under pressure. Both rely on distortion, condensation, and an acute sense of form. Both are dangerous when done well.
This cover doesn’t just comment on politics. It exposes how politics already functions as caricature: swollen, theatrical, and barely contained. The whole world aligned with that Bulgarian model now. So learn from "Pras Pres".

And let us bury disentanglements in here.