Mafalda, San Telmo: Argentina’s Beloved Comic Strip

Each Sunday in Buenos Aires, tourists line up to take their photo next to the statue of a small girl on a city bench.

This is Mafalda in San Telmo, arguably Argentina’s most well-renowned comic strip character. Two of her friends, Susanita and Manolito, stand beside her.

Mafalda is a 6 year old girl who hates soup and is riddled with worry for the general state of the world and humanity. Her social commentary is has been translated into multiple languages and exported across the world.

Created by artist Quino in 1964, she is a cultural icon and is even going to star in her own Netflix series in 2027.

San Telmo’s Mafalda: Who is she?

Argentine’s know Mafalda, they love her as if she were a real citizen.

You will see her all over Buenos Aires. Her portrait painted is onto newspaper stands on nearly every corner, there is a plaza dedicated to her in Colegiales, and books of Quino’s comic strip are on the shelves of bookstores all over Argentina.

But many tourists only learn of her thanks to the famous Mafalda San Telmo statue. So, who is she?

Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón, popularly known as Quino, is the artist who brought Mafalda to life in the early 1960’s.

The character was originally designed for advertisements for Mansfield home appliances (owned by Siam di Tella). Quino drew an average middle class family, the company put as a condition that the comic strips must include their appliances and the characters’ names must begin with the letter M.

This was to be a covert campaign, with the appliances just “naturally” appearing in a few of the comic strips. But the project fell through when it was offered to the newspaper Clarín and the “secret” campaign was discovered.

In 1964, the magazine Primera Plana came to an agreement with Quino to feature Mafalda, without its original advertisements involved.

Quino got to work on new drawings, featuring only Mafalda and her parents. With time, as she became more popular, he added in a band of friends – Felipe, Manolito, Susanita, Miguelito y Libertad – and a younger brother, Guille.

The final strip ran in 1973 in the weekly publication Siete Días Ilustrados, a decision made by Quino himself.

📚 Read Mafalda wherever you are: You can find affordable books of Quino’s Mafalda on here on Amazon.

Mafalda in San Telmo, Where is she?

📍Calle Defensa 700 (Corner of Calle Chile), San Telmo, Google map pin

You can find the famous statue on the corner of Chile and Defensa streets in San Telmo.

Here, Mafalda sits on the bench and two of her friends – Susanita and Manolito – stand on either side.

Steps from her bench, at Chile 371, you’ll see a plaque next to the entrance to an apartment block. This is where Quino lived while drawing Mafalda and also where Mafalda herself lived. The plaque reads “Here lived Mafalda.”

During the San Telmo market every Sunday tourists form a long line waiting to take their photo sitting next to San Telmo’s Malfada.

Visit on any of the other 6 days of the week to take a quick photo with no wait.

The Comic Strip Walk in San Telmo: Mafalda & More

Mafalda is the most famous statue in San Telmo, but she’s not the only one.

It is actually part of a series of comic strip sculptures called the Paseo de la Historieta which features all of Argentina’s beloved comic strip characters and spans three neighborhoods – San Telmo, Montserrat, and Puerto Madero.

📍You can see the full list of characters and a Google Map marking each one’s location on the Buenos Aires’ official tourism site.

The walk begins or ends with Malfada in San Telmo.

Another important character that even foreign tourists may recognize on this walk is El Eternauta, another comic turned Netflix show.

El Eternauta is, on the surface, a sci-fi story about an alien invasion. In reality, it is a symbol of defiance against authoritarianism. The message did not go unnoticed and the comic’s creator, Héctor Germán Oesterheld, was “disappeared” during the last military dictatorship with all four of his daughters.

What can appear to be a silly little comic can be a huge statement.

And Quino via Mafalda, a little soup-hating 6 year old, does that best.

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