''13, Rue del Percebe'' (13, Barnacle Street) is a Spanish comic book created by Francisco Ibáñez that debuted in the pages of ''Tío Vivo'' magazine on March 6, 1961, and quickly became highly popular. The last strip was published in 1984. ''13, Rue del Percebe'' is a single panel that takes up the whole page that represents a humorous view of a building and the people who inhabit it. Each apartment is a panel in itself, with fixed characters with defined personalities. Usually each panel is not related to the others and can be read in any order, but sometimes an event affects more than one neighbor, and read in order the comic effect is more pronounced.

The inhabitants

The flat roof is inhabited by a

debtor A debtor or debitor is a legal entity (legal person) that owes a debt to another entity. The entity may be an individual, a firm, a government, a company or other legal person. The counterparty is called a creditor. When the counterpart of this ...

who is always imagining ingenious ways to evade his

creditor A creditor or lender is a party (e.g., person, organization, company, or government) that has a claim on the services of a second party. It is a person or institution to whom money is owed. The first party, in general, has provided some propert ...

s, and by a poor black cat that is always been tortured by a cruelly ingenious mouse. The debtor is inspired by Manuel Vázquez Gallego, another Bruguera cartoonist who also drew a self- parodic character. The third floor is inhabited by a clumsy thief, who's always stealing useless things, and his long-suffering wife. Next door, there is a family with three mischievous young boys. On the second floor live an elderly woman who's always having trouble with the animals she buys or adopts (usually dogs, but she also had others, including a

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully Aquatic animal, aquatic placental mammal, placental marine mammals. As an informal and Colloquialism, colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea ...

), and a hopeless tailor with a lot of nerve (before this, a crazy scientist lived there with his monster, in an obvious parody of the monster of ''

Frankenstein ''Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' is an 1818 Gothic novel written by English author Mary Shelley. ''Frankenstein'' tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a Sapience, sapient Frankenstein's monster, crea ...

''). On the first floor dwell an incompetent

veterinarian A veterinarian (vet) or veterinary surgeon is a medical professional who practices veterinary medicine. They manage a wide range of health conditions and injuries in non-human animals. Along with this, veterinarians also play a role in animal r ...

with an equally impossible clientele and an overcrowded guesthouse run by a stingy woman. On the ground floor, there's a grocery run by Mr. Senén, a distrustful and stingy man who's always cheating on his clients with the weight and genuineness of his merchandise though he frequently gets his comeuppance. At his side, there's the porter's lodge with its gossiping porter. Mr. Hurón (Spanish for "ferret") lives in the sewer's entrance in front of the building, and is often seen chatting with the porter or fending off the hazards which come with living in the sewer. Lastly, there's the

elevator An elevator (American English) or lift (Commonwealth English) is a machine that vertically transports people or freight between levels. They are typically powered by electric motors that drive traction cables and counterweight systems suc ...

. Through inanimate, the elevator's troubles are a running gag on the strip. Either it does not work properly, is stolen, removed for repairs (and replaced with alternative elevation methods like a

cannon A cannon is a large-caliber gun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder during th ...

or a

bellows A bellows or pair of bellows is a device constructed to furnish a strong blast of air. The simplest type consists of a flexible bag comprising a pair of rigid boards with handles joined by flexible leather sides enclosing an approximately airtig ...

), or replaced by newer versions commissioned to a mixed list of builders (like a maker of

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

pieces or a glassworker). Sometimes, another of Ibáñez characters, Rompetechos, also visits the building, mostly causing Mr. Hurón some form of grief.

Other media

Some of the characters from this strip appear in the movie '' La gran aventura de Mortadelo y Filemón'', based on Ibañez's most well-known characters,

Mortadelo y Filemón ''Mort & Phil'' () is a Spanish comics, Spanish comic series, published in more than two dozen languages. It appeared for the first time in 1958 in the children's comic-book magazine drawn by Francisco Ibáñez Talavera, Francisco Ibáñez. Th ...

. In the movie, Filemón's mother lives in 13, Rue del Percebe and her neighbors are the strip characters. This strip has been said to be the inspiration for the successful TV series '' Aquí no hay quien viva'', but both the author of the comic and the authors of the series have denied this.

References

{{Authority Control 1961 comics debuts 1984 comics endings Spanish comic strips Gag-a-day comics Gag cartoon comics Spanish comics characters Fictional Spanish people Comics characters introduced in 1961 Fictional streets and roads Comics by Francisco Ibáñez Talavera