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After the fall of the right-wing Estado Novo in Portugal in 1974 and the death of the military dictator Francisco Franco in Spain in 1975, many protest murals appeared in both countries on the walls of abandoned buildings and in marginalized urban spaces. These ephemeral grassroots artworks celebrated the collective liberation of the Iberian people from the cultural constraints of Western Europe’s two most enduring dictatorships. Murals constituted a striking visual response to the sociopolitical changes occurring in two countries that were experiencing the transition to democracy in very different ways. In this article, I argue that collectively painted murals, often overlooked in scholarship, are a valuable visual source to analyze contrasting ways of conceiving democracy from below and the appropriation of public spaces following the demise of two long-standing ultra-Catholic dictatorships. By acknowledging the multilayered power of images in murals and drawing on a rich body of research in visual studies, this contribution will address common people’s iconography in Iberian murals and the collective actions of those who sought to secure democratic rights. I will place particular emphasis not only on the visual representational framework of the relationship between the masses and individuals but also on the depiction of gender relations as an intrinsic part of the democratization process in both countries.

Democracy on the walls: the portrayal of the common people in post-dictatorship Iberian murals