Manuel Rodriguez (March 2, 1940 – November 28, 2012), better known as Spain or Spain Rodriguez, was an American underground cartoonist who created the character Trashman.

"I would go back to Buffalo periodically and I would take photos. It's interesting. Hardly any of those buildings are there now. My old neighborhood is a freeway interchange. Whenever I run into people from that time period they all remember those days. I thought it was me. I thought it was some personal quirk remembering Buffalo in those days but in Buffalo itself there's a whole cult around that." - Manuel Spain Rodriguez

Manuel Rodriguez was born March 2, 1940, in Buffalo, New York. He picked up the nickname Spain as a child, when he heard some kids in the neighborhood bragging about their Irish ancestry, and he defiantly claimed Spain was just as good as Ireland. Rodriguez studied at the Silvermine Guild Art School in New Canaan, Connecticut alongside cartoonist M.K. Brown.

"When Manuel Spain Rodriguez ditched art school in 1959, the decision came easily. The Silvermine Guild School of Art professors didn't appreciate his representational drawings, an alcoholic landlord threatened his life, and he'd witnessed a good friend commit suicide. So he returned to his hometown of Buffalo, New York, where he painted, took a janitor job (at the Western Electric plant for five years), became invested in left wing politics, and joined an outlaw motorcycle gang. Rodriguez's experiences as a member of the Road Vultures Motorcycle Club later manifested in black-and-white illustrations when he moved to Manhattan."

In New York City, during the late 1960s, he became a contributor to the underground newspaper the East Village Other, which published his own comics tabloid, Zodiac Mindwarp (1968). Trashman's first appearance was as a full-page serial in the East Village Other. He covered the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago as a reporter for the East Village Other, adventures which were chronicled in My True Story (Fantagraphics Books, 1994). One of his earliest strips, "Manning," featured a hard-boiled, over-the-top cop and was later cited as an influence on the British comics character Judge Dredd.

"When I met him, he struck me as an archetypal character. Somewhere between a crazy artist crossed with a left wing radical, crossed with a working class Latino hood" - Robert Crumb

Rodriguez was a co-founder (with Nancy Griffith, Bill Griffith, Robert Crumb, Justin Green, Art Spiegelman, Roger Brand, and Michele Brand) of the United Cartoon Workers of America, The U.C.W. of A. brand appeared on a number of comix of that era.

"In November 1970, Simon Deitch, Rory Hayes, and Spain Rodriguez organized a meeting at Rodriguez's home to debate the foundation of a movement that could, if need be, attach itself to the IWW. From this first meeting came the name of the association, "United Cartoon Workers of America" (UCWA), but no other concrete decisions were made. The following month, over the course of a second meeting that assembled a greater number of participants with assistance from Rip Off Press, the creators placed their own status in underground publishing on the table. As independent creators, they circulated in a restricted network of small publishing houses, none of which realized any particularly elevated profits at the expense of the creators. In the eyes of some, like Roger Brand, this working situation did not justify the existence of a union. The third meeting was more didactic: Albert Morse, the lawyer for Zap Comix (and for Robert Crumb), wrote a report on the topic of royalties, Greg Irons explained how to buy art supplies in bulk, and Bill Griffith dissected the costs of printing and distribution. The creators present at this meeting agreed on a general page rate of twenty-five to thirty dollars a page, and on the royalties of about one thousand dollars for twenty thousand copies of a thirty-six-page comic book sold for fifty cents. Subsequent meetings took place but no union saw the light of day."