Makoki: the fugitive from the asylum who explained the Transition

• Obituary Cartoonist Miguel Gallardo, creator of Makoki and founder of El Víbora, dies

• El Papus, El Jueves, Por favor The satirical magazines of the Transition

In the fearful and provincial Spain that was observing the slow decomposition of Francoism and the ideological transvestism with which many relocated before the advent of a new stage, the emergence of multiple countercultural expressions in Barcelona, ​​from the

ramblera performances of

to the music suburban band of the

and

magazines

, was a necessary punk spit on the new consensus that the Transition wanted to establish.

revolt

in which comics played a special role, with artists such as

(Lérida 1995), who died last Monday in Barcelona, ​​as one of his most outstanding references.

Gallardo was, together with Juanito Mediavilla, the creator of the antihero Makoki, his most popular character but not the only one, since

He was also part of the founding group in 1979 of the seminal magazine

.

Like a quinqui transcript of Randle McMurphy, the protagonist of

, the novel with which the psychotropic drug guru Ken Kesey recounted his experiences in a Californian psychiatric hospital, Makoki became a countercultural icon since he began his wanderings in 1977 with

in the pages of the musical magazine

.

From that moment on, and until the publication of their last issue,

(1994), Gallardo and Mediavilla converted this alternative quinqui, with a popular and street language and a "chunga line" drawing -voluntarily away from the clarity of the classic European comic-, in

, during the post-Franco period, during the Pujolist regime and, even, in the disillusionment of felipismo.

Makoki is

to escape the electro-shock.

He is always dressed in a straitjacket and leads a gang of cretins who raise rows in that pre-Olympic Barcelona, ​​dirtier, less touristy, more violent and less institutional than that of the post

and Ada Colau.

"Inspired by the aesthetics of Popeye, Elzie Crisler Segar and

, Gallardo was with Mediavilla the creator of the funniest, wildest and most characteristic antihero of Spanish

comics ," says writer Ignacio Vidal-Folch , who collaborated with him as a screenwriter for

.

"He was one of the first to understand that the comic was

, that it was a means of communication," highlights cartoonist Siscu Bellido.

With the character of Makoki, Gallardo gave continuity and synthesized the explosion of the patriotic underground comic, which had begun with authors such as

.

A scene in which Gallardo is involved when he arrives in Barcelona in 1973, initially to study at the University of Fine Arts, although he will end up at the Massana school.

The son of

, Gallardo immersed himself in the most marginal comics, visiting a temple of the counterculture such as

, a space created by Jaume Fargas and reading comics such as

(1975), Electric Stomach (1976) or the magazine

, which Mariscal, Miquel Farriol and Nazario launched as an iconoclastic cover letter for the Spanish

comic .

In those years in which the dream of a different Spain was still safe from the perversion of power and egomania, little by little the publications that made room for this new generation of Spanish cartoonists, steeped in North American countercultural comics, multiplied -Robert Curmb, Harvey Pekar...- and who decided to break formally and aesthetically with the classic

and the Bruguera school.

Gallardo published in

and, together with Max, Josep María Beà, Montesol and other cartoonists, will be one of the founders in 1979 of the groundbreaking magazine

, whose original name was going to be

and which had as its motto «Comix for survivors»

The magazine had the business support of Josep Maria Berenguer and Josep Toutain, and reflected from the purest political incorrectness

, when neither heroin nor AIDS had yet begun to mercilessly massacre an entire population. Spanish generation.

sold up to 50,000 copies a month and ceased publication in 2004, after 300 issues.

Long before its end, when the Spanish comic industry went into crisis and

faded, Gallardo delved into his role as an illustrator and poster artist, collaborating with major American cultural magazines, including the

, as well as newspapers such as the

and

.

He also wrote graphic novels, including

and

, in which he described his close relationship with his autistic daughter.

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