Throughout history, graffiti has been an integral part of urban, social, and political culture. In the 1970s United States, graffiti was produced inordinately by youth in retaliation to the marginalization of people of colour in specifically New York high poverty, urban ghettos. Similarly, graffiti in Spain developed into a highly political and social means of protest primarily in the years following the fall of Spanish military dictator, Francisco Franco Bahamonde, in 1973.  In both societies, graffiti on trains was a significant part of the graffiti culture. I argue that graffiti on trains can be understood like the message in a bottle, as a system of taking thoughts, expressions, and protests beyond their original geographical and cultural confines. This paper examines how graffiti on American and Spanish trains works as public communication aimed at large and diverse audiences in the 1970s. In both societies, I demonstrate, this traveling “message in a bottle” helps marginalized groups assert their presence and challenge systemic inequalities.  

Keywords: Graffiti, Train, United States, Spain, Political Protest