From Propaganda Poster to Political Branding: Visual and Discursive Evolution of Electoral Poster Design in Spanish General Elections (1977–2023)

The Spanish democratic transition inaugurated in 1977 an uninterrupted electoral cycle in which the campaign poster became the foremost propagandistic medium and the most immediate expression of the political culture of each moment. No longitudinal analysis has yet covered the full arc from the first democratic elections of 15 June 1977 to the general elections of 23 July 2023, nor has the transition from ideological propaganda to personalised political marketing and multiplatform communication been systematically examined across all sixteen electoral contests. This study analyses campaign posters from the Spanish general elections available in the Dipòsit Digital de Documents of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) through a mixed-methods longitudinal design that is explicitly framed as a qualitative historical–comparative interpretation supported by descriptive quantitative evidence, combining critical visual discourse analysis, semiotic image analysis, quantitative content analysis, and the historical–comparative method, applied to a representative corpus of posters from the main political parties in each contest. The findings reveal three major evolutionary stages characterised by shifts in partisan identity construction, leadership personalisation, and the progressive integration of poster imagery into multiplatform communication ecosystems. These results indicate that electoral poster design both reflects and actively shapes transformations in Spanish political culture, and that the poster retains significant strategic and symbolic relevance within contemporary digital campaign environments.