Manga Made in Spain: Conversations with the creators

A talk about how manga has influenced Spanish comics. Moderated by Carla Berrocal, a mangaka to the core, the conversation will feature Ana Oncina and José Robledo , the winner, among other awards, of the Japan International MANGA Award. Discover how Japanese comics have left their mark on various generations of comic writers in our country.

Carla Berrocal (1983) was born in Madrid. She studied illustration and graphic design in her hometown. She has reviewed comics for the Guía del Cómic and contributed to Madrid’s Círculo de Bellas Artes radio programme on the same subject. In 2004, she published her first comic and embarked on her career as an illustrator. She has contributed to M21, the official magazine of the Madrid City Council. In 2019, she received an award from the Spanish Royal Academy in Rome for her comic project Ms. Concha (Doña Concha), a story about the Spanish copla singer Concha Piquer, which was published by Reservoir Books in 2020. This spring, the same company published her latest graphic novel, Wasteland (La Tierra Yerma).

Ana Oncina surprised readers when she published her first book, Croquette and Pasty (Croqueta y Empanadilla), about an adorable couple. The story's down-to-earth humour brought a smile to many a face. So much so, that she won the Popular Award at the 2015 Barcelona Comic Fair and attracted a huge number of followers on the social networks. After the success of her third offering, she began coordinating the comic magazine Voltio with Álex Giménez. In 2019, she published The F*cking 30 and in 2021 Just Friends, with which she won the International Manga Award in the silver category. In 2023, she released Planet. She is currently working as an editorial illustrator while publishing comics and personal reflections on her page on the Patreon platform.

José Robledo was born in Madrid in 1979. Although he started out studying Philosophy, he took a course in film screenwriting and finally graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, which is where he met Marcial Toledano in 2001. They have been working together ever since. In France they had a major triumph with the series "Ken Games" (Dargaud), which brought them to the attention of public. In 2012, they took part in the group project WW 2.2 (Dargaud). In 2014, they published Louviers, a prequel to one of the Ken Games books, with the same publishing house. And in 2015, Robledo and his lifelong sidekick published the first of three volumes of a new series, "Tebori", which explores the mysterious world of yakuza tattoos. It won the International Manga Award (bronze category). In 2022, they illustrated 'CityZen' (Dupuis), based on a script by the singer Jain.

Organised by: Casa Asia