Lausanne, 1986 International Olympic Committee President Juan Antonio Samaranque announces that Barcelona has been chosen to host the 1992 Olympic Games. The Catalan capital listens enthusiastically, dons festive attire, and gets to work. She knows well that after forty years of dictatorship, this is her chance. All the gears of the unique joint seem to work as synchronously as possible: local lords and ordinary citizens, politicians and people, technocrats and artists, all together become a fist and give the city a new face. In this great transformation, the architect Oriol Bohigas is a pioneer in bringing the city together with its abandoned coastline. But next to him there is someone else to whom History attributes the bright modern face of the Olympic Barcelona: illustrator, graphic designer and industrial designer Javier Mariscal.

Born in 1950 in the southern capital of Spain, Seville, he began to make his mark in design when, in 1980, he collaborated with architect Fernando Salas on the design of the Duplex bar in Valencia. The characteristic eponymous stool he designed for this bar is a triumph of modern industrial design. The same applies to the trolley table called “Hilton”, which in 1981 the great Italian industrial designer Ettore Sotsas included in the first collection of furniture and objects of the Memphis design movement.

However, world recognition comes when he wins the competition to design the corporate identity and mascots of the Olympic Games. “Kobi”, the Pyrenean Sheepdog, which in the hands of a great designer turns into one of the most successful paper heroes in the history of the Western world (and the most profitable and best-selling mascot in the history of the Games), codes in simple, almost childish lines, the whole spirit of that great and joyful city transformations. But hidden within its innocent, avowed, and understandable exterior is an edgy avant-garde that comes from cutting-edge, fringe subcultures that Mariscal knew well, such as comics and graffiti.

Mariscal is a living giant of world design who today, at 72 years old, continues to create his voluptuous Mediterranean images with the freshness and enthusiasm of a child. After his 2010 animated film Chico and Rita, featuring a jazz musician in 1940s Cuba (who won an Oscar for Best Animated Film), he is finishing up a new animated film (again starring the musician, but this time bossa nova, in Rio de Janeiro in the 70th), and exactly thirty years after those unforgettable Olympic Games, he revives Kobe, creating new versions of it. On the occasion of this anniversary, we recently had the honor of talking to him.

– Kobe was the main character, and all of us together. Everyone saw him everywhere, everyone called his name. He even issued a gesture that represented him to the deaf and dumb. Kobe symbolized the citizen of the Mediterranean and the rebirth of Barcelona.

– It was a great time. We wanted to shout to the whole planet: “We are in Spain, Franco is no more, and we are in a big city with a strong Mediterranean temperament, where we love to drink wine, eat tomatoes and bread on the beach, live together in the street to enjoy life, and in at the same time, we want to make changes to create a vanguard.” We wanted to reinvent the Olympics.

People in Barcelona can be like the Germans, absolutely organized, but at the same time they want to have fun – just like the Greeks.

– Yes, in the best possible way. It was the first Olympic Games to be held in conjunction with the Paralympic Games. For the first time in television, technologies have appeared that can reach the ends of the world. Everything and everything was perfectly coordinated and worked like clockwork. Because, you know, the people of Barcelona can be like the Germans, absolutely organized. But at the same time they want to have fun, to have fun, both the Mediterraneans and the Greeks.

– Yes, of course, this is the Mediterranean life that we both live. When I come to your country, I feel at home. It is so familiar to me, the way of life of people is so close to us.

He sends me postcards from all over the planet: from Japan, New York, Buenos Aires, the South Pole. Sometimes it’s a transvestite, sometimes it’s a white man, sometimes it’s a black girl, sometimes it’s gay. Lately I’ve developed countless variations of it and tried to try my luck in the metaverse by turning them into NFTs. Also, since it’s been exactly 30 years since the Olympics, I’m drawing graffiti with his face on the streets of Barcelona. I made something like a graffiti tag where Kobe looks like he’s crawling out from behind a wall.

– I am finishing my new cartoon “They Shot the Pianist”, which takes place in Rio de Janeiro in the 60s and 70s. It is essentially a documentary about the disappearance of a bossa nova musician. I’ve been working on this film for three years now. The art of animation is incredibly tedious, especially when shots are made by hand, like me. But we hope to finish in September and next year go to world festivals, Cannes, Sundance… Also I will be in your country for 12 days, the last week of September. My friend Fernando Trueba, with whom we made Chico and Rita together, will shoot his new film in the mountains, three hours north of Athens… (he means Pelion, where Trueba will shoot Phantomheart) starring Matt Dillon). ). However, first I will go to an island whose name I do not remember. But I remember how wonderful it is. You know, we in Spain are very jealous of you, because we would like to have thousands of islands like you, and we have only four.