Goodbye to an essential, Forges

Graphic comedian, writer, film and television director and regular radio collaborator, the brilliant Antonio Fraguas, Forges, dies at the age of 76.

Graphic comedian, writer, film and television director and regular radio collaborator, the brilliant Antonio Fraguas de Pablo, Forges, died early this Thursday in Madrid at the age of 76, a victim of pancreatic cancer.

Today an essential is gone. Essential to understand half a century of the history of Spain and essential to look in the mirror reflected in its Forgian characters.

Today more than ever, political and social reality brings to mind two blasillos, one of its charismatic characters, engaging in this dialogue: “And how do we greet?” “Well, nothing: we just say good morning.” “No way, if we say that they will accuse us of being manipulators.” “Gosh, it's true.”

"With the loss of Forges, the characters of Blasillo, Mariano y Concha, Cosma y Blasa, Borja... who have told us in a humorous way the events, some important, others anecdotal, in the history of our country, also leave us. A daily laughter that caused us to laugh at ourselves," said the Minister of Education, Culture and Sports, Iñigo Méndez de Vigo.

For the president of the Television Academy, Manuel Campo Vidal, "Antonio Fraguas had an acute creative talent. A man of television, he knew how to portray in his drawings the images of daily life and political life with an exceptional ability to connect with public concerns and also with personal ones. He would caricature some political leader as well as offer a series of portraits about the tension of anyone over his brothers-in-law. He also reminded us all of the drama of Haiti as he fought against the unbridled noise in popular festivals. de Pozuelo. Even during his illness he gave us a lesson in courage and discretion by publishing his daily drawing hours after his death."

Forges was born in Madrid on January 17, 1942, the son of a Catalan mother and a Galician father, although as he himself liked to emphasize “I am half Galician and half Catalan, born by accident in Madrid and from Athletic Bilbao.”

At the age of fourteen he began working on Spanish Television and in 1973 he left public television to dedicate himself professionally to graphic humor. He published his first drawing in 1964 in the newspaper Pueblo and later went to Informaciones. In 1970 he began to collaborate in Diez Minutos and worked in the humor magazines Hermano Lobo, Por Favor and El Jueves, and in several weeklies. After drawing in Diario 16 and El Mundo, in 1995 he began to publish a daily cartoon in El País.

On radio he has participated in programs such as Protagonists, by Luis del Olmo, and The windya, by Javier Sardá and Gemma Nierga, and more recently in It's not just any day, from RNE, with Pepa Fernández.

He has directed two films (País S.A., 1975, y The tasteful bengador and his pastry chef mother, 1977) and four comedy series on television, The Mulińandupelica beetle (1968), Us (1969) y 24 hours here (1976), on TVE, and Deformesemanal (1991), on Telemadrid. One of the most recent public appearances on television takes place on TVE in the program Impequeibols Sinners (2014).

Since the publication in 1972 of his first book under the title The Forges Book, Forges did not stop publishing various books on different topics. On the occasion of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his first drawing, in 2014 The Book (of 50 years) by Forges, a compilation of some of his best cartoons, and Coloritor: El Libro Antiestrés De Forges. His last publication was The Most History Here (in three volumes).

In his written work, customs and social criticism occupy a fundamental place. A substantial part of it is made up of albums on the history of Spain in comics and on computers for dummies. In 1992 he published his novel Babylonian Twelve, and in 2012 he was appointed technical director of the Quevedo Institute of Humor.

Recognized track record

In addition, he received numerous awards, among which the Freedom of Expression Award from the Union of Journalists of Spain and the Creu de Sant Jordi from the Generalitat of Catalonia stand out. In 2007, the Council of Ministers awarded him the Gold Medal for Merit at Work and in December 2013 he was awarded the Pedro Antonio de Alarcón National Journalism Award, in recognition of his entire career. He was also recognized as 'Doctor Honoris Causa' by the Miguel Hernández University of Elche.

In October 2014, the National Library, in collaboration with the Royal Post Office, launched a collection of stamps with his cartoons as part of a new philatelic series dedicated to graphic humor. That same year he won the prestigious Quevedos Latin American Graphic Humor Award.

But without a doubt, the main prize, as he once stated, was knowing that every day millions of Spaniards "wake up with a smile, half a smile or a slap on the wrist from humor."

Today a genius of humor, a unique philosopher, has left.