For half a century he had caricatured Spanish social life with his inimitable style.
His last vignette: "This flaccid political year is irreparable.
In 2014 he visited the editorial office of '20 Minutos' and answered questions from readers.
Goodbye Forges, exemplary graphic humorist Forges magisterial vignettes.
The cartoonist and humorist Antonio Fraguas de Pablo, known as Forges, died at dawn on Thursday in Madrid at the age of 76, a victim of pancreatic cancer, according to sources confirmed by the family to El País newspaper. newspaper in which he collaborated since 1995.
Forges died at the Jiménez Díaz Foundation clinic in the capital. The disease had been diagnosed in February 2017.
Throughout his professional career, the humorist expressed his vision of reality in publications such as Hermano Lobo, La Codorniz, El jueves, Pueblo, Informaciones, Diario 16, El Mundo or El País, a newspaper in which he published his cartoons during the last 23 years.
This newspaper considers him "the humorist who has best portrayed the last half century of the history of Spain" and stresses that "he managed to express with tenderness and irony the evolution of a society that went from the Francoist development of his first drawings to the hyper-technological world of its last stage "
. Among his many prizes are the Prize for Freedom of Expression of the Union of Journalists of Spain; the Cross of Sant Jordi, the highest Catalan decoration; the Gold Medal for Merit at Work; and the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts. Forges, however, never wanted to be a member of any jury, and never presented himself, personally or by third parties, to any contest or award.
Jokes seriously
Forges, the graphic humorist who made the order of his father, be an "original draftsman", his password leaves, as a last vignette an example of the eternal struggle for justice and against barbarism led by the human being.
Because Forges, born in Madrid in 1942, always laughed with, not the human species, through those characters almost always bald, big nose and bulging eyes with which he described the attitudes and behaviors that filled him with shame, rage or tenderness.
But always with respect, humor and originality, because that's what his father asked him when he confessed his vocation as a draftsman: "Let your drawing be recognized at fifteen meters". And so did this "serious joke artist" with his "blasillos", the "Marianos" and "conchas", the "deep officials" or their "castaways lost".
Familiar and close characters always full of astonishment and perplexity before a world that they do not understand that they have reached several generations of readers after the author did not lack in the last 50 years to his daily appointment to publish a vignette.
From the 'History of Here' to the crisis
Essential figure to know and understand Spanish society, through his genuine sandwiches of thick edges, Forges portrayed the hard world of the crisis and the mortgaged, as well as the youth, those who on more than one occasion took the cartoon to tell us how difficult it is to find a decent job.
We must also bring the history of our country to those who have always fled from the great volumes through that witty chronicle of the Spanish past that was collected between 1980 and 1984 in Historia de Aquí, which was reissued in 2015, to Remember that "those people who do not know their history are obliged to repeat it".
And here, as in the more than "eighty-one thousand" drawings, as well as encrypt the works he had done, always showed the critical and vindictive spirit that has accompanied him until the last days of his life.
Continue creating beyond retirement
Bitter days in which the graphic humorist, member of the Follow Creando platform, defended the right to make the artistic production of creators compatible with retirement with a clear message: that the government "give back" what has "charged" them everyone who was in their situation.
According to Efe in 2017, at 75 years old, he was in a "film" situation since he had to return to the Treasury the last four years of pension, an amount that was around 160,000 euros, for being an author "with 79 years of contributions ".
"How is it possible that there is a government in the 21st century that has the mission to ignore the culture in all possible ways," he denounced with a strong voice absent any note of humor.
But in addition, as he also denounced, he had stopped receiving the pension "generated" as a TVE technical worker. "And nothing happens!" He exclaimed "It's not fixed, and it's as simple as saying this administrative action is suspended, and they can do it perfectly." I accuse the PP government of stealing from certain people, casuamind, and not others. "Therefore, the Madrid, never hesitated to say that the time had come that everyone," en bloc ", will reach the Court of Strasbourg to denounce" the attitude of the government ":" because there is bad faith and that goes against Human Rights. "Something that always reflected in their work, so today has been off a line that was always expected, that vignette that with humor as a tool was always an opinion piece full of that freedom that always characterized his office.