Urban art on highways exists through murals and works that look out over land that was once more fertile, a dual carriageway or a wheat field . Let's discover all the intermediate colors before reaching our destination.
See photos: the 25 best murals in the world
The residents of an inland town have gathered in a polygon. The children are waiting. someone comes with a bucket of blue paint and shape the drawing. The belly, the head, the tail. The wall of a whale it has been finished in a facade and, as a backdrop, cars drive towards the beach along the nearby road.
Because beyond the big cities, urban art appears on the roads and highways of our country from the most unexpected positions. Sudden, like new lighthouses for towns as close as far from the sea.
The following examples of urban art speak of the rural spain, the threats of urbanism, the past and the future . The best excuse to stop to discover everything that the road has to offer us.
‘THERE ARE LETTUCES’ (VALENCIA GARDEN)
Tip is a strategic neighborhood south of the city of Valencia where the garden has been devoured little by little by urban planning and the “Logistics Activities Zone” (ZAL) project.
In 2018, artists like Manuel Garrido, Sam3 or Ana Penyas , author of the magnificent comic “Everything under the sun”, came together to promote sensemurs , an initiative that claims the value of the garden through several murals that are the best reflection on the way to the beach.
The second edition of the festival, held in 2022, has involved a display of works against the expansion of the Port of Valencia , the main threat of a land where the furrows and barracks resist the advance of the cement.
CIUDAD REAL SILOS
In 2019, the artist Okuda San Miguel and his team Ink and Movement , among other referents of street art, joined the Laborvalía association and its Titanes project, backed by the Ciudad Real Provincial Council to support the social and labor integration of people with disabilities through graffiti.
More than 450 members relived the old silos Real city with his works of urban art in nine different towns , among them Villanueva de los Infantes or Calzada de Calatrava.
Almodóvar Girls, the Templars of La Mancha or Don Quixote make up a landscape of color that speaks to the plains of the La Mancha territory to make it more inclusive, more eternal.
ADVERTISING BILLBOARDS OF RIVAS VACIAMADRID
Rivas Vaciamadrid is one of those outlying areas of the capital that we often pass by on our way to the beach. However, this time there may be more than one excuse to stop.
Mural by Ampparito for the Reversibles de Madrid Street Art Project in Rivas.
The reversible project of Madrid Street Art Project opted in 2019 to reinvent even 13 billboards as a way to gain ground from the mass media and add color to the daily life of the Ripenses neighbors.
amparito , BR1, Daniel Muñoz, DoaOa, Escif, Hyuro, NeSpoon, OX, Reskate, Sam3, Sara Fratini, Spy and Vermibus were the artists chosen to bring this Outdoor museum where different nods to the environment and reflections on urban planning are intertwined.
An extension of the good work of Madrid Street Art Project, an association behind many of the murals of another benchmark of urban art in Spain: the village of Castrogonzalo, in Zamora.
LOS ALCAZARES (MURCIA)
As you approach the Mar Menor, the AP7 expands in the form of villages forgotten by the rush of summer. In the streets of Los Alcázares there is silence, stands of desert plants and English tourists confused by the waters - here more murky - of the Mediterranean.
And there, on that wall, we find a family looking at the sea and its whales; faces of African immigrants who are also part of the social fabric of the town, or women who float on the ships of a polygon.
Los Alcázares also hosts this May the Urban Art Festival Mar Menor Museum , enlivened with concerts, workshops and new designs that we can enjoy during the coming summer months on way to Cartagena either Calblanque.
THE BATHROOM (LION)
The Vía de Plata that runs between Gijon Y Seville It was a claim during the Middle Ages among the pilgrims who made the Camino de Santiago from the south. Today it is motorcyclists and cyclists who circulate along what is known as Spanish Route 66 to stop La Baneza.
This town in the province of León hosts every year the urban art festival Art Aero Rap , an event that has turned La Bañeza into the town with the most murals per inhabitant in Spain . A huge canvas where they coexist Neptune, Frida Kahlo or nods to the motorcycling Grand Prix has also been developed in this inspiring town.
IVARS COOPERATIVE (LLEIDA)
For decades, the plains of Lleida have housed brave locals who have surrendered to the whims of the land, and The Ivars d'Urgell Cooperative wanted to pay tribute to all these people in a very unique way.
Considered as the largest street art mural in Catalonia , the graffiti of this cooperative was inaugurated at the end of 2019 and surrounds three silos 38 meters high . The artists Jofre Oliveras and Nil Safont were the creators of this work inspired by the Harvest and Threshing Festivals of La Fuliola, which evokes the long tradition of the area.
BOSC OF COLUMNS OF THE C-31 (BARCELONA)
The 400 columns that support the C-31 on its way through the municipalities of Sant Adrià de Besòs and Badalona they became a canvas for 61 local and international artists in 2016 thanks to the association El Generador Art i Creació Cultural.
More than half of the columns of this urban microworld house murals of art-denunciation, comics and figurative style with a common message: build new cultural bridges and turn the asphalt jungle into a more colorful forest.
BOLAÑOS DE CAMPOS (VALLADOLID)
Raúl played by Javier Bárdem in Jamón, Jamón would have loved it the caní goal of Bolaños de Campos , the Valladolid town where Nacho Nevado (aka Ampparito) grew up.
Under this name of a village lady hides an eclectic artist with absolute freedom to reinvent facades and plains: from a Pinocchio who lies to the crops to a goal that dissects the famous Osborne bull. A "ball game" as a metaphor for the goals scattered around the field in which no one plays anymore.
ROUTE OF THE MURALS OF RIBERA DEL DUERO
The Ribera del Duero Wine Route welcomes an alternative proposal full of color and nods to this land. The towns Aranda de Duero or Tubilla del Lago , both in Burgos, or Castrillo de Duero, in Valladolid, unfold their full potential through peripheral walls in factories or urban buildings that represent an ode to local culture.
Among the examples we find the mural of oenological winks of the Briego wineries in Fompedraza, Valladolid; the Meson El Pastor , in Aranda de Duero; or rural accommodation The house of Vadocondes , also in Burgos.
THE LOOKS OF TORRELLAS (ZARAGOZA)
Clothes hanging, a lady who sells melons on the road or two children on a swing. There are many witnesses to rural crossings, but few are as obvious as the ones gates of the town of Torrellas.
Ten faces, five of children and another five belonging to elderly people of different ethnic groups, today occupy old metal doors reinvented by the artist Xolaka . An initiative that emerged in 2018 that links with the many other murals in the town.
M.I.A.U (FANZARA, CASTELLÓN)
somewhere between Castellon de la Plana and Montanejos we found an unfinished museum, and that is where its potential lies. The town of Fanzara is proud to have an urban art complex without doors or tickets, only facades that speak of the history of a territory but, especially, of coexistence.
The creation of two sides, one for and one against the creation of a landfill on the Mijares River, fractured the relationship between the residents of this town until Javier López and Rafa Gascó saw in the spray the best way to heal old wounds.