Fire engine red, bordered by polka dots and stretching the length of three cars, the sign for the Orte clothing store had long loomed over Madrid’s Alcalá thoroughfare, its presence steady even as fast-food restaurants and chain stores began moving into the area.
When the store closed its doors and the space was poised to be rented, news swiftly reached Alberto Nanclares. Within days he was on site, working with a team to painstakingly pry the sign from the facade where it had sat for more than five decades.
Nanclares is part of the Iberian Network in Defence of Graphic Heritage, a loose assembly of more than 50 projects that celebrate and safeguard a form of heritage they say is increasingly under threat: the commercial signs that have long shaped the identity of cities.
“Everyone sees these signs but few give them much thought,” said Nanclares, whose rescue work is carried out under the banner of the Paco Graco project. “When these signs are thrown away, the history of these shops, their clients and their owners disappear. The memory of our cities is thrown away.”
The projects housed within the network vary widely – from those that salvage signs with hopes of one day opening a museum, like Nanclares, to those that catalogue signs ranging from century-old enamels to gaudy neons, creating a living archive that spans 25 cities and towns across the peninsula.
Central to the network is the idea that heritage is about not just palaces, cathedrals and royal jewels but also the places that shape our lives and define our identities – a sort of heritage for the rest of us, said Nanclares. “There is little notion in Spain that this is heritage, that this should be something that unites us, that allows us to advance and to better understand ourselves.”
Inspired in part by museums dedicated to signs in Berlin and Warsaw, the Iberian movement has taken on new significance as the region reels from a series of recent economic downturns – from the 2008 financial crisis to the destruction wreaked by the pandemic – that have transformed cityscapes.
As small businesses close, they’re often replaced by a familiar roster of global behemoths with little connection to the city, said Laura Asensio, a graphic designer based in the north-western Spanish city of Valladolid.
She pointed to changes sweeping through city centres across Spain. “Whether you’re in Madrid, Barcelona or Salamanca, the urban iconography that we see is practically the same,” said Asensio. “There’s always a McDonald’s, a Zara … It’s a pity because cities lose their charm.”
Asensio’s project, Valladolid with Character, aims to stave off some of this homogeneity with an interactive map of more than 1,000 singular signs across the city. Compiled by a team, the map marks out everything from the neon-red bus stop sign that for decades has greeted weary travellers at the local bus station to the giant calligraphy pen that dominates the sign for a shop specialising in fountain pens.
In Lisbon, Rita Múrias and Paulo Barata launched their project in 2014, as souvenir shops and crepe stands were relentlessly proliferating across the city. “We started as designers looking for lettering and then we realised that the signs capture the stories of the owners of the shop and people’s memories,” said Múrias. “People tell you of visiting these shops with their grandmother or when they were a child. They connect the place with the memory.”
They soon began using their spare time and their own funds to rescue signs from businesses that were closing. Their project, Letreiro Galeria, has now amassed a collection of 250 signs that sit in a borrowed warehouse space as the pair work towards their dream of one day opening a museum.
Around 90% of the signs they’ve collected are neon, hinting at the radical changes that have swept across the city in recent years. “Until the 80s there were lots of neon signs in Lisbon,” said Múrias. Many were cast aside as the city weathered successive financial crises, gentrification and a boom in tourism.
Every part of a sign – from the typeface to materials such as ceramics and gold leaf lettering – is the result of a personal decision, offering a window into how broad themes such as the economy are playing out in people’s lives at any given moment, said Rosa López, a graphic designer whose Carril Conga project has been spotlighting signs seen across Madrid since 2015.
“Trends come and go, but there’s always decisions when it comes to materials or durability,” she said. “Often these decisions don’t go unnoticed – sometime when you see a neon sign, you think: madre mia, what are they selling here?”
While some cities have enacted legislation to protect emblematic signs, members of the network hope that their efforts will cultivate a deeper appreciation and understanding of this heritage, perhaps convincing some to leave signs where they are even as new shops and services move in.
“It’s a labour of consciousness-raising. It’s interesting to see how people react when they follow me on Instagram and they see photos of signs rather than selfies or nights out,” said López. “But then they start sending me photos of signs they notice while travelling. It’s contagious.”
