Graffiti artists have added social commentary to many of the billboard advertisements in Madrid, and election campaign posters are no exception. The improbably smooth forehead of Albert Rivera, who leads Ciudadanos, has ‘fascista’ written all over it.
The would-be Banksy of the Madrid metro doesn’t elaborate, but the charge seems unlikely. Rivera’s party is, by (almost) anyone’s definition, firmly in the centre ground; it’s endorsed by Guy Verhofstadt, the former Prime Minister of Belgium and one of Europe’s leading federalists.
Images of Pablo Iglesias, who leads Podemos, are mostly left alone. Perhaps the vandals like his pony tail, or his parties proposal of a universal ‘citizen’s wage’. After all, spray paint isn’t cheap. He is, however, vilified in the pages of El Pais and Tiempo. One conservative commentator called his party a ‘modernized expression of nihilism’ and a ‘threat to liberal democracy’.
Such emotionally charged rhetoric is understandable in context.
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