TIA agents are better ambassadors for the CSIC than we suspected

If we think about Mortadelo and Filemónwe also immediately think of all the outrages that the TIA agents have to suffer because of the inventions of Professor Bacterio, the translation into the Carpetovetonic language of the iconic mad doctor which is a foundational part of the science fiction imagination. But there is more: a traveling exhibition traces the history of science in the last half century through the creations of Ibáñez.

What does it consist of? The Higher Council for Scientific Research has premiered the exhibition ‘The science of Mortadelo and Filemón‘, which will remain open until February 15 before beginning its tour of various Spanish cities. The exhibition brings together 39 covers published between 1975 and 2018, organized into five thematic blocks that examine everything from Bacterio’s chaotic inventions to climate crises and epidemics. Pura Fernández, vice president of Scientific Culture of the CSIC, highlights in ‘El País’ that Ibáñez turned research into an everyday occurrence through humor.

The sections. The exhibition structures its 39 covers into five thematic blocks that document the evolution of Spanish scientific thought and that link to CSIC research through QR codes for visitors:

• ‘A world in motion under the magnifying glass of science’ examines natural phenomena: from glacial retreat to epidemiological crises, including agricultural innovations.
• ‘Technological innovations incorporated by the TIA’ satirizes inventions that generate more chaos than solutions, questioning whether technology responds to real needs or commercial impulses.
• Professor Bacterio stars in his own section as the archetype of the researcher isolated from the world: in ‘Bacterio’s laboratory, successes and accidents’ his failed experiments raise dilemmas about ethics and safety in laboratories.
• ‘Science in the social mirror’ addresses information manipulation, pseudoscience and responsible communication.
• ‘Emergency science for troubled times’ talks about climate change, air pollution, invasive species such as the tiger mosquito, and Saharan dust intrusions.

How it works. Francisco Ibáñez built a visual archive of Spanish scientific development over six decades. What began in 1958 as detective adventures evolved into a satirical chronicle of Spainwhich included technological modernization. Starting in the seventies, with Spain in full transformation, its covers captured real milestones: the takeoff of the space race in ‘El cocoa spatial’, genetic engineering in ‘The people copying machine’ or the phenomenon of drones in ‘Drones matones’, until reaching the climate alerts of the 21st century.

His method was far from the anticipatory rigor of Franco-Belgian comic icons such as Hergé (who consulted the zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans and the astronautics expert Alexandre Ananoff in the Tintin album ‘Target: The Moon’) or the historical accuracy of Goscinny in Asterix. His territory was immediate parody: he transformed scientific headlines into slapstick visual, turning Bacterio’s laboratory into a distorting mirror of contemporary research.

The CSIC and pop culture. The public body trusted for years in Spanish graphic humor to democratize knowledge. Fernando del Blanco, head of the library of the CSIC Research and Development Center, inaugurated ‘Science according to Forges’ in 2019, bringing together 66 cartoons by the cartoonist published in ‘El País’ between 1995 and 2018. With this one by Mortadelo he shared a methodology: transforming recognizable cultural figures into bridges to complex scientific concepts. Humor allows us to address everything from the Higgs boson to budget cuts in science.

Science versus parody. As Pura Fernández comments in the aforementioned ‘El País’ article, Mortadelo and Filemón manage to discredit practices without delegitimizing the need for knowledge. Bacterio embodies a poor application of science: isolation, lack of peer review, continuous risks… However, his inventions address real phenomena. In this way, he emphasizes, the public understands the reading that Ibáñez proposes: Bacterio satirizes malpractice, not science itself.

In Xataka | When Ibáñez lost the rights to Mortadelo in 1985, he created a new magazine where they would have another name: ‘Yo y yo’