Farewell to Miguel Gallardo, Cartoonist and Comic Book Icon

We remember the life and works of the late Spanish cartoonist, teacher, and creator of Makoki and María y yo, who has died at age sixty-six

Domestika deeply regrets the loss of Miguel Gallardo, the Spanish cartoonist, writer, teacher, and a member of our creative community, who has passed away at sixty-six years old.

Gallardo had been suffering from cancer for several years, which also became a driving force behind his work. He talked about his experience of living with the illness in one of his comics, Something Strange Happened to Me on the Way Home, written after he underwent an operation in 2020. In an interview with Domestika (available in Spanish), he also shared how he drew cancer with humor, betting on sarcasm and a positive attitude in the face of struggle.

Among many other characters, Gallardo created Makoki, a comic that's emblematic of the 1980s in Spain. He became an icon in the Spanish underground comic scene. Later he moved toward the biographical with his transformative work María y yo (Maria and Me), a story about him and his autistic daughter. Reflecting ahead of the release of one of his books in November 2020, he told Domestika: "The stuff good stories are made of is our own lives and the lives of our family and friends."

Life as a source of inspiration

Miguel Gallardo's (@gallardo) decision to pick up a pen and start drawing at such a sensitive and personal time (that also coincided with the beginning of the pandemic) did not surprise those who knew him.

Although the illustration world has always admired his work for renowned publications like La Vanguardia, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, his most remarkable talent was—without a doubt—his ability to turn any life situation into tender, entertaining, surprising, and thoughtful vignettes.

As proven in some of his most resonant works, Gallardo knew how to educate us on sensitive issues. In 2007 he published María y yo, a graphic novel that narrated his adventures and travels with his autistic daughter María, who was thirteen years old at the time. The book, for which he received the National Prize of the Generalitat in the comic section had a sequel seven years later, María tiene 20 años (Maria is 20 years old) which shared the evolution of that endearing relationship.

In 2009, the artist agreed to make a documentary based on the two stories through which he helped many families with children on the autism spectrum.

But even before moving the world with María and Me, Miguel had already been inspired by his family life to write A Long Silence. Created in 1998, the project rescued the memories of his father, a republican soldier in the Spanish Civil War. The work set out to recover the memory and dignity of those who had been silenced for years in Spanish history.

He summed it up like this: “My father spent forty years as silent as the grave, trying not to say one word louder than the next. This is the story my father told me over and over again, made up of bits and pieces, of pieces that don't fit together, but that I know to be true, and so I'm going to try to tell it, giving my father a voice. A voice that tells a part of history that is increasingly forgotten, but that those who lived it will never forget it”.

The "odd one out" of his family

Miguel Gallardo was born in the Catalan city of Lleida in 1955 and—as he himself explains in his course introduction—he was always drawn in by cartoonists who used the Encyclopedia of the History of Spain as a source of inspiration. "I liked to draw the Visigoths and the kings," he says. But, although he loved spending the day crafting images, his father wasn't as happy about it.

“I was born into a family in which they were all, basically, very technical. My father was an industrial expert, my brother an engineer. There was no one who had any artistic inclination, so I was kind of the odd one out," he remembered.

"My father was a teacher in math, physics, and chemistry—and those were all the subjects I failed," he recalls with a laugh. “But, somehow, I convinced him to let me go to Barcelona to study Fine Arts. It was the first trip of my life going from Lleida, where nothing was happening, to Barcelona where things were happening."

However, Miguel was unable to start the degree and had to return to his city to try to convince his father that he could perhaps have a future in arts and crafts instead. He got onto an arts and crafts course, however, after three years he was kicked out, which signaled the end of his university career.

But that "failure" was, in fact, the beginning of an artistic career and life so rich that it would end up making him an essential artist in the history of Spanish comics.

The Creator of Makoki

Miguel rose to fame in the seventies when he marked a turning point for Spanish comics. Not even ten days had passed since the first democratic elections in post-Francoist Spain when—together with Juanito Mediavilla and Felipe Borrallo—Gallardo brought Makoki to life.

The now-iconic character (who escaped from an electroshock session with an electrode attached to his head, and had all kinds of adventures in the industrial heart of Barcelona), became an expression of the emerging counterculture during Spain's transitional years. The character was eventually declared, "the most radical and alternative antihero of the genre in Spain."

This is all came about after leaving Barcelona's School of Arts and Crafts when Gallardo found a job in an animation studio. Here he met his colleague Mediavilla, who introduced him to the world of comics. “We were very enthusiastic. When the animation work reached a dead end and we saw things were not going to go much further, we decided to go all in, move in together, and try to live off the stories we were putting together,” he reflected.

"It was the end of the seventies, there were no magazines or anything, but we had all kinds of gigs on the side, like making cartoons for the anniversary of an engineer who was getting married. We had to make cartoons of 300 people," he recalled.

Things changed when a representative from the music magazine Discos Express contacted him; it was then that they created Makoki. Some of the characters that emerged from this comic went on to have their own stories, which made it a hotbed for all kinds of adventures for a long time. Makoki was the beginning of a series of adventures that would shape Gallardo's signature in the international comic scene forever.

Embracing emotions

Throughout his career, Gallardo showed a striking ability to create a perfect balance between his editorial work for important international publications and his personal work—always rich, complex, and challenging.

He was able to draw inspiration from everyday issues, such as his relationship with his dog Cala in The Great Book of Dogs; and even from much more difficult topics like the diagnosis of his own illness in Something Strange Happened on the Way Home. His secret, it seemed, was not to be afraid of emotions—either good or bad.

"When you say cancer, when you say tumor, and when you say brain, people take a step back... The combination is incredibly scary. Illustrating this entire process was a way of explaining it to myself and then explaining it to others,” he explained in his interview with Domestika describing the creative process behind that work.

It was an explanation, a reconstruction, and, finally, a way of resignifying the story of his illness from the beginning, when he found himself not knowing how to use the computer.

Gallardo described the joy he felt when he woke up in bed at the Sant Pau hospital in Barcelona in 2020 and found that his most powerful weapon of creation—drawing—had come out of the operating room intact.

"The first thing I did when I woke up was pick up the pen. I had brought several copies of my book María y yo to give to the doctors and I realized that I could sign them. There, I stayed calm. I knew that as long as I could do that, my healing process was underway," he shared with the telling generosity that characterized him.

Buying a sandwich, walking his dog, and immersing himself in the freezing winter sea seemed to be great sources of inspiration for Gallardo. These daily details were worth gold for a man who fundamentally knew how to love life and make art with it. Regardless of the raw material that fate brought him, Miguel created genius.

His talent and courage are without a doubt a legacy for generations that follow, seeing him face each stage of his existence with a pen, a piece of paper, and, essentially, a huge heart (and humor) that shone in all of his work. We will continue to learn from him.

Rest in peace, Miguel!

English article by @amyvsnelling.