Manuel Vázquez Gallego

Life The son of a railroad worker, his parents were friends with novelist Wenceslao Fernández Flórez and playwright Enrique Jardiel Poncela, who seemingly influenced Vázquez's humor. In the late 1940s he moved to Barcelona. In 1947, in the early years of Francoism, he was already publishing his comics in Flechas y pelayos, a children's magazine linked to Falange Española. The next year he created his first characters for Pulgarcito magazine, published by Editorial Bruguera, a Barcelona-based imprint of popular literature that dominated the comics market in Spain at the time.

Discerning fact from myth in Vázquez's life is not without challenges, given the colorful stories about his erratic lifestyle and contradictory statements in interviews (by his own account, he was born in 1934, not 1930). A notorious loafer and swindler, he served time in prison in three separate occasions by his own account, one of them for the crime of bigamy, and fathered eleven children. He was also a gambler, frequenting several bingo houses in Barcelona. Vázquez not only failed to dispel the rumors that he was the man in the attic, but further fueled his legend in a long-running series of semi-autobiographical comics, Los cuentos de Tío Vázquez ("Tales of Uncle Vázquez", 1968), portraying himself as a lovable rogue who never paid his debts.

In the late seventies, during Spain's transition into democracy, Vázquez started contributing to newly founded adult magazines such as El Papus, Hara-kiri, and later Makoki.

His controversial lifestyle also led to Vázquez having his own biopic, The Great Vazquez (2015), written and directed by Óscar Aibar, who had met him while both worked at Makoki.

A street in Rivas Vaciamadrid, a suburb of the Spanish capital, bears the name of Anacleto, agente secreto.

Awards In 1990, Vázquez was awarded the Grand Prize at Saló Internacional del Còmic de Barcelona for his entire oeuvre. It is the only major award he received in his lifetime.