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Carajicomedia (Prick Comedy) is a 16th-century Spanish poetic work of 117 stanzas composed of eight 12-syllable verses. It appeared for the first and only time in print at the end of the Cancionero de obras de burlas provocantes a risa (1519). It is a sexual parody of a little more than a third of Juan de Mena’s very famous but now unfashionable El Laberinto de Fortuna (1444, The Labyrinth of Fortune), an allegorical vision poem written in very Latinate language. The text parodied, however, is actually the first printing of Hernán Núñez's edition of El Laberinto entitled Las Trezientas (1499), because Carajicomedia, not only parodies Mena's poem, but also Núñez's prologue and notes.
In the original work, a poet asks why good men often come to bad ends. The goddess Bellona leads him to Heaven, where he sees three different versions of the Wheel of Fortune, respectively representing the past, the present, and the future. In the parody version, a knight faces the problems of old age and impotence. He goes on a quest to regain his virility, and the goddess Luxuria leads him to a whorehouse in Valladolid. Despite the efforts of a witch and an old woman to restore his virility through masturbation, the knight never regains his past virility or his youth. The knight eventually contemplates the nature and effect of lust.
The actual authors of the parody poem are unknown, though the personas of Fray Bugeo Montesino and Fray Juan de Hempudia are the purported authors. The poem is thought to mockingly depict Ferdinand II of Aragon and the regent Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, and the authors likely feared retribution. The exact time of the parody's composition is unknown, but its political allusions point to a time when the infirm Joanna of Castile had already inherited the Castilian throne. There were conflicts over who would be Castile's regent, and the parody covertly alludes to the factional struggles of Joanna's reign. Along with other Spanish satirical works, reprints of the Carajicomedia were prohibited by the original version of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (1559). Its first reprint version appeared in 1841.