Cruz delgado

Born on December 12, 1929, Cruz Delgado Palomo from Madrid was already a great cartoonist as a child who blotted school books with his illustrations, just like his schoolmate, Pablo Núñez, who over time would be another prominent figure of the Spanish animation. He also made his first steps as an entrepreneur, since he made a little money renting comics to his colleagues, by founding a traveling library.

But above all, Cruz Delgado was passionate about Walt Disney, whom he dreamed of being able to emulate over time, despite the fact that in Spain there was not even a place to learn animation techniques. He would accumulate all the written material he could find on the subject, and he would go up to the projection booth of the cinemas to collect the frames that were cut from the film reels, so that he could study them and try to understand the process of animated feature films.

After studying at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid, Cruz Delgado does not lack work in the field of comics, in magazines such as “Maravillas”, “Florita” and “Pumbi”, which were all the rage in Spain in the 50s, and They were a true mass phenomenon. At the end of the decade, Delgado is recruited to work at the legendary Moro studios, where the animations of very popular characters were created, such as the Telerín Family, who sent children to bed on television.

But Delgado does not quite understand how the enormous potential of the Moro studios is practically only dedicated to the field of advertising, and there are no attempts to shoot animated feature films. He decides to leave the company and ends up in Belgium, at the Belvision studios, which adapted the adventures of Tintin. At Belvision, he works as an assistant animator on the feature film Pinocchio dans L’Espace , by Ray Goosens, and gets published in the legendary magazines “Tintin” and “Spirou”.

When he finished his work in Belgium, he returned to Madrid, where he founded a production company dedicated exclusively to cartoons. His first short was El gato con botas , from 1964, which won awards at the Gijón International Film Competition and at Gottwaldov (Czechoslovakia). After several jobs in the world of advertising, and a series of shorts, with the characters Molécula and Boxy the kangaroo, among others, he made his feature film debut in 1973 with Mágica aventura , which premiered at the Imperial cinema in the Spanish capital, where they used to put all the Walt Disney movies , and it achieves great success.

He was not so lucky with his second feature, El desván de la fantasía , co-directed by José Ramón Sánchez, a former friend and fellow student of Moro. Unfortunately, it fails to be distributed in the cinema, although it finally manages to turn it into an animated series.

In association with the businessman José Romagosa, he shot the pilot episode of Don Quixote de la Mancha (1978) . TVE is interested in the project, which decides to broadcast 39 episodes, for the production of which Delgado has to make a great effort, first recruiting animators at large, and even requiring the help of the company of his old schoolmate Pablo Núñez. He manages to finish the episodes with a very narrow margin, almost at the time that they have to air. The series –which adapts Cervantes’s work with great fidelity and in its entirety– obtains a great response from the public, and helps a whole generation of Spanish children discover the novel.

Next, he tackles his third feature film, Gulliver’s Travels (1983) , which includes the episode of the giants from the famous work by Jonathan Swift . There was a fourth feature, The Four Musicians from Bremen –the first winner of the Goya for Best Animated Film– which would later become the series Los trotamúsicos , whose characters became very popular.

In addition, Cruz Delgado always had the dream of creating that animation school that he could not have. In 1998 he organized and directed the Animation and Cartoon Film Specialty at ECAM, Madrid Community Film School.