Last day of posters in the election campaign

Spain is different. The day before each election here is designated a ‘day of reflection’, during which all campaigning is banned. Campaign posters should be removed tomorrow but based on previous experience, some of them will be up for months.

By the way: SyS does not end with this election campaign. If you live in Spain, you’ll already know that many streams of political dialogue are carried out in the streets and on the walls of our towns. SyS will go on and I’ll be adding more content in Spanish and Catalan (who knows, maybe Gallego and Basque too), to encourage non-English-speaking citizens to take part too. Also, I’m working on a post about stickers and their use in political campaigns.

Anyway, here are a few pics from this afternoon in Cerdanyola.

UPyD ‘ID card’ poster

Thanks to Elena for this one!

March 6, 2008 | Filed Under Posters, Carteles, Cartells | Leave a Comment

JERC traffic light poster

This is a poster I’ve seen around a few times. The red light shows a bull (traditionally representing Spain) and the green light, a stylised ‘Estelada’, the flag of Catalan independence.

Thanks to Elena for this one!

March 5, 2008 | Filed Under Posters, Carteles, Cartells | Leave a Comment

Neo-nazi graffiti in Cerdanyola

An ugly sight which unfortunately you can see quite often in the Vallès Occidental:

Note how the symbol started off as a Spanish fascist logo and has since been adapted to an anarchist ‘A’ sign. This is quite a common thing to see as well. I suppose that various groups roam around looking for their opponents’ logos and adapting them.

March 5, 2008 | Filed Under Graffiti | Leave a Comment

Catalanist bald-head strategy

I noticed that one road near our house has posters for CiU (conservative Catalan nationalists) on one side of the street and ERC (left-wing republican Catalan nationalists) on the other.

Both candidates, Josep Duran i Lleida of CiU and Joan Ridao of ERC have a degree of baldness (Duran i Lleida) more so, but the designers of the electoral posters decided to approach this in different ways. CiU crops Duran i Lleida’s head, so although you probably already know what he looks like, you still only have the suggestion of baldness. ERC, meanwhile, chose to employ a passport-photograph style format, repeating the bottom of the main photo in a frame above and the top in a frame below, thus offering us two chances to look at Ridao’s head.

CiU versus ERC

To me, there’s no doubt that CiU had the better design on this poster. Even if you don’t care about the bald thing, it’s clear the CiU went for a bolder, stronger picture, while ERC have employed a device (the passport-photo idea) which, apart from anything else, reduces the size of Ridao’s head on the poster itself.

What do you think? Is the baldness even remotely relevant? Do you think it could affect your decision of who to vote for?

Original photos: