2023-07-16 14:20:39
The Catalan is renowned for his wit and sense of humour. He has now died in Barcelona at the age of 87.
Madrid.
Francisco Ibáñez, the inventor of the comic series “Clever & Smart”, which is also very popular in Germany, is dead. The Spaniard from Catalonia died on Saturday morning at the age of 87 in his hometown of Barcelona, according to the Penguin Random House publisher in Spain. “He leaves us with a tremendous legacy of wit, a sense of humor and more than 50,000 pages of unforgettable characters that have delighted a large number of readers,” the publisher wrote.
In addition to many other personalities in Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez also regretted the death of the draftsman and author. “You made life much happier for us, for many generations in this country (…) We will miss you, Francisco Ibáñez,” wrote the politician on Twitter. The newspaper “El País” honored Ibáñez on Sunday as the “king of comics”, the Catalan newspaper “La Vanguardia” described him as a “magician of humour”.
Ibáñez was born in Barcelona on March 15, 1936, the son of an accountant. He drew as a small boy – according to tradition, initially on his father’s newspapers, because he couldn’t find any paper at home. In 1947, at the age of eleven, Ibáñez published his first cartoon in “Chicos” magazine. He first worked in a bank, but soon as a young man was employed as a draftsman by the Bruguera publishing house in Barcelona and gave up his job at the bank in 1957 to devote himself solely to cartoons.
The Catalan became known, among other things, with the comic “13, Rue del Percebe”. But he achieved worldwide success above all with “Clever & Smart” – two secret agents who work for the TIA (a parodic allusion to the US secret service CIA). According to the publisher, the books have been translated into nine languages and have also served as a template for numerous films. (dpa)
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