SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, December 23. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The cartoonist José Carlos Gracia died last Tuesday in Puerto de la Cruz, in Tenerife, where he settled years ago and dedicated himself to portraits, with which he achieved great renown. During his life he accumulated awards such as the Extraordinary Award from the Tenerife International Comic and Illustration Fair in its 2022 edition.
The author can boast of a prolific career, being one of the clear exponents of the so-called generation known as the Magnificent Nine and entering the category of one of the great authors of our country.
For a long time, this man from Madrid, born in the year the Civil War began, had chosen Puerto de la Cruz as his new residence and here he dedicated himself to making caricatures in the streets for tourists, an activity that brought him great benefits. In those times, open-air sales were not regulated, nor did taxes have to be paid, so Gracia, according to his friend, the critic Manuel Darias, became rich and could earn about 2,500 pesetas a day at the time.
His interest in drawing came from his relatives, for example, his grandfather was the founder of the Puerto de Santa María School of Fine Arts in Cádiz and his father served as a social gathering at the Ramón Gómez de la Serna club. All of this meant that the cartoonist based in the Canary Islands grew up in a bohemian and cultured environment where some of the main representatives of the generation of ’27 were present, such as Lorca, Mihura or Tono, among others.
His friend and pupil Manuel Giménez precisely remembers that thanks to him he came closer to García Lorca’s poetry and also learned in parallel about this profession to which both have dedicated their lives. International fame would come to him through the portraits he made of Kennedy, Mariano Rajoy or the members of the Spanish Royal House. But he also made his notable forays into comics and illustration, where he was one of the pioneers, first in Carlos Lumen’s studio and in Estudios Moro, where he worked in the animation sector.
His beginnings took place under the shadow of Pepe Laffond, when he was barely 15 years old and over time he was able to rub shoulders with other prominent authors such as Luis Bermejo or Martín Salvador. From that time, it is notable that he joined the Catalan group in illustrated sections, which allowed his work to be seen in the strips of the most important newspapers in the world through the King Factures Syndicate agency.
Before, he also worked with Consuelo Gil, in the magazine Chicas, and later with scriptwriters such as Argüello and Medina. Gracia created characters like Chico Juárez, along with Martín Salvador, Luk Jardy, with Pepe Pizarro or Tap Tolikn, with Carlos Giménez. Precisely, it was the latter who took up the baton of one of the most popular series signed by Gracia, Drake and Drake, created for Ibergraf.
Darias went punctually every month to spend an afternoon with his friend in the Port, and during those visits he told him episodes of his life such as when he had certain run-ins with the big publishers and in fact as a result of one of them he decided to move to the Port. Darias dedicated the pages of his section to him, at least three times, a decade worldwide.
He mastered comics so much that he came to be considered one of the main Spanish authors as well as portraits and he did so until the end of his days with a weekly full-page section in the province’s newspapers. But he also dedicated himself to landscapes, creating works that were highly valued. Proof of the level he reached is that at one point he owned studios located in Tenerife, Madrid and Cádiz that he alternated as he pleased.
Giménez remembers him as the man from whom he learned many resources, who made him understand the art of comics and ultimately considers him his teacher or even something more, a great friend. On one occasion he came to Tenerife to see him and describes the news of his death as “a real shame,” because “I loved him very much and his biography is very close to mine,” he said.
Salvador García Llanos, former mayor of Puerto de la Cruz, recalled that the author shone in the bohemian sessions that took place on Avenida de Colón but he also strolled through the pages of the main newspapers with his portraits of politicians, businessmen and artists.
