Turisme, modernització i idiosincràsia nacional a l’Espanya del segle XX

Abstract

This article explores the role of tourism in Spanish cultural and political history in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although Spain developed moderndomestic leisure practices in the nineteenth century, tourism promoters were dismayed
by the small numbers of foreign visitors they received. By the early twentieth century, the project of developing a receptive tourism industry became a major component of a broader program of national «regeneration». After the Second World War, when the Franco dictatorship faced international ostracism, foreign tourism became an important form of international relations. In the subsequent three decades, tourism became arguably the Franco regime’s most important political and economic good until problems of overbuilding and corruption ended the euphoria of Spain’s so-called «tourist miracle».