Miguel Gallardo's Comic María y yo (2007)

Given that cultural products foregrounding disabled protagonists continue to be a relative rarity in Spain—just as elsewhere—it is particularly (and appropriately) intriguing that one of Spain's most notable graphic artists, Miguel Ángel Gallardo, has written (and drawn) a wonderful comic centered on the theme of autism. Gallardo's name might ring a bell as he is a well-known figure associated with the Movida Madrileña of the 1980s, an explosion of cultural activity in the wake of the death of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco that gave rise to a range of liberated artistic expressions in music, film, performance art, and more. While director Pedro Almodóvar is perhaps the best-known figure to have come out of the Movida—continuing to make films even in the twenty-first century (Volver 2007; Abrazos rotos 2009), but famous for his films of the early and late 1980s, including Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios of 1988 (see also Triana-Toribio 2000 and Graham and Labanyi 1995)—other graphic artists associated with the period have not garnered as much fame in international circles. As noted in a three-page entry in the two-volume Atlas español de la cultura popular: de la Historieta y su uso, 1873–2000, edited by Jesús Cuadrado, Gallardo is a designer, publicist, illustrator, and animator who was born in Lleida, Catalunya in 1955. He began as a practitioner of historietas (comics) in 1977 and directed the first era of a popular graphic series titled Makoki. Regarding the latter, Cuadrado notes that ‘su coautoría del popular personaje Makoki […] oscureció su compleja personalidad de autor gráfico multidisciplinar’ [his co-authorship of the popular character Makoki (…) overshadowed his complex identity as a multi-faceted graphic artist]. The encyclopedia entry goes on at length listing Gallardo's extensive production of series, publications, monographs, catalogues, illustrations, animation, television work, and more (510–12). One of Gallardo's other notable roles was as collaborator and co-creator of the pioneering graphic magazine El Víbora (see Alary 56, 60; Beaty 116, 119; Dopico 318–34; García 165; Vilarós 211–13), and the recent republication of his works of that time period (e.g. 1981's Makoki: Fuga en la Modelo, by the Barcelonan publisher La Cúpula in 2009) only reaffirms the value of his contributions to the comic world in Spain.