Walls of Anxiety: The Iconography of Anti-NATO protests in Spain, 1981–6

Abstract

This article addresses the protest culture of the Spanish anti-NATO movement during the first half of the 1980s. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, it focuses on the collective practice of painting murals and graffiti ( pintadas) on walls in the outskirts of Spanish cities. This was done by neighbourhood associations, together with local artists, in order to display and disseminate the widespread angst regarding entering and remaining in NATO. Murals constituted a grassroots multi-layered phenomenon that emerged through the interaction of different communicative actors, social processes and semiotic forms. The article explores three themes. Firstly, the political iconography of anti-NATO murals in Spain whilst comparing it with the aesthetics of other European peace movements. Secondly, the domestic reframing of anti-war and antinuclear icons as well as anti-American clichés, violence and the army, gender relations, Spanish national sovereignty and, more generally, the process of modernisation and westernisation that was rapidly affecting post-Francoist society. Finally, the analysis of these visual expressions offers a bottom-up picture of the final stage of the Cold War and a better understanding of the role of Spanish civil society during the period of democratic consolidation.

Intelligent Restoration Technology of Mural Digital Image Based on Machine Learning Algorithm

“…The murals of the Holy Monk's nunnery mainly reflect the description of characters and events and the texture of folk decoration. They are the treasures of China's national art [4]. With the passage of time, mural images are affected by natural factors, such as wind and sand erosion and natural decolorization, which will cause varying degrees of damage, and even lead to the gradual disappearance of the image [5].…”