Visual Art and Propaganda Ecologies in the Basque Country: A Sample of Guernica Motifs from the Benedictine Sticker Archives (1978–1989)

Abstract

The Benedictine Archives at Lazkao contain a multitude of propaganda stickers and related visual media that provide a snapshot of the Basque region’s artful political culture in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the most compelling examples include several items that remix Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, referencing the famous antiwar painting to become a form of mass-circulated pastiche. This move was somewhat unusual amid the strong nationalist bent of public discourse and art in the Basque Country during this period. Almost entirely unknown outside the region, these materials capture political performance during the decade-long period between the instauration of Spanish democracy (1978) and the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), when separatist sentiment reached a peak in the Basque Country. This artful visual platform, rendered in the small, focused format of stickers, constitutes a useful index of rhetorical currents within the Basque Country and Spain, as well as an interesting analogue prototype of what we might call, in the twenty-first century, meme culture. Circulated in bars and other public places across the Basque region, and frequently worn upon clothing, the stickers demonstrate a propaganda principle described by Jonathan Auerbach and Russ Castronovo, whereby participants in movements of mass persuasion actively partake in the dissemination and consumption of propaganda. The stickers normally refer to very concrete events (for instance, a one-day celebration, a protest for a concrete situation, etc.). When organized on topics and themes, they create a nonlinear visual account of post-Franco Basque history, providing propaganda narratives that invite performative acts from the audience. This account documents the significance of the vast Benedictine collection for future scholars, analyzing, in detail, four stickers that employ Guernica in their design. It also considers several other representative items from the collections that play on other art forms, as well as pop culture, in their attempt to influence public opinion, politics, and media consumption.