In Portugal in general use “propaganda” is definitelly just the political stuff whilst “publicidade” is definitelly just the commercial stuff.
Mind you, maybe before those two concepts were more merged: I know that in legal terms the political stuff is explicitly called “Propaganda Política” since I’ve done paphlet distribution for a political party here during election campaigns and the rules for putting “political propaganda” in people’s mailboxes are different than for “publicidade”.
It is uncommon to call propaganda (in the political sense) publicidade, so maybe in popular conversations this makes publicidade a kind of propaganda, and not the other way around.
Ah right.
In Portugal in general use “propaganda” is definitelly just the political stuff whilst “publicidade” is definitelly just the commercial stuff.
Mind you, maybe before those two concepts were more merged: I know that in legal terms the political stuff is explicitly called “Propaganda Política” since I’ve done paphlet distribution for a political party here during election campaigns and the rules for putting “political propaganda” in people’s mailboxes are different than for “publicidade”.
Maybe there’s a technical difference, but at least in Brazil, publicidade and propaganda are widely used as synonyms
It is uncommon to call propaganda (in the political sense) publicidade, so maybe in popular conversations this makes publicidade a kind of propaganda, and not the other way around.