Miguel Gallardo

Miguel Ángel Gallardo Paredes (Lleida, 1955 - Barcelona 2022), who signed simply as Miguel Gallardo, was a well-known cartoonist and creator, among many other characters, of Makoki, the emblematic comic star who, born in 1977, has appeared in key publications of the motherland’s counterculture (Disco Exprés, Star, El Víbora…), marking a whole generation and creating a perpetual tide of obsessive fanaticism.

In the 1990s and the beginning of the new century, Gallardo started out on a new stage with more personal, mainly biographical works, including Nosotros somos los muertos (We are the Dead), where he serialised Un largo silencio (A Long Silence), which was subsequently published as a collection by De Ponent in 1997. After this, his prize-winning María y yo (María and I, 2007), a story about autism featuring his daughter Maria and himself, was acclaimed in the media. In 2015 he published María cumple 20 años (María Turns 20), a continuation of the same story. In 2019 he illustrated the book Rubianes, solamente: Los mejores monólogos ilustrados, nene, and in 2020 he published Algo extraño me sucedió camino de casa.

In recent years, Gallardo has also worked with the mainstream press. His cartoons have appeared in The New Yorker, La Vanguardia, Público and other publications.