When the Desirable and the Feasible Converge Through Tourism Space

Culture and Society in

Tourism Contexts

Antonio Miguel Nogués-Pedregal Editor

To u r i s mS o c i a lS c i e n c eS e r i e s

Vo l u m e 17

To u r i s mS o c i a lS c i e n c eS e r i e s

Vo l u m e 17

Culture and Society in Tourism ContextsAntonio Miguel Nogués-Pedregal

Editor

Culture and Society in Tourism Contexts strives to understand the social and cultural dynamics in Mediterranean tourism destinations through ethnographic examples and case studies from places including Greece, Spain, Morocco, Croatia, Lebanon, France, and Crete. Exploring themes such as globalization, cosmopolitanism, leisure mobilities, power, and late capitalism, this volume analyzes the blurring edges of tourism and migration, the role the former plays in the dialogical construction of cultural identities, or how the interconnection between each of the diverse residing sociocultural groups influences the relation with other groups. The volume has abandoned the prevailing “acculturative perspective” in tourism studies. Instead, it considers tourism as a constituent power of the present and as a mediator in the production of senses-meanings in those Mediterranean territories where tourists have long been present.

As this occurs, the practices that constitute daily life seem to blur traditional exclusive categories such as leisure and labor residents or locals, nationals or foreigners. Thus, the volume approaches tourism as one of the names of power, since it creates and enhances social and cultural differences, sorts them out and manages them. The work of several social scientists, from different interdisciplinary backgrounds, over numerous years is documented using multiple research techniques to observe cultures and societies as they occur in daily practices. This analysis discovers how tourism characterizes the daily lives of social groups living in tourists’ destinations and how it offers a distinctive sense of collective memories, thus comprehending cultures and societies in tourism contexts.

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Chapter 3

When the desirable and the feasibleconverge through tourism space

A.-M. Nogues-PedregalUniversitas Miguel Hernandez, Spain

INTRODUCTION

Following the adage that ‘‘an image is worth ten thousands words,’’ thischapter will use ethnographic pictures to illustrate two main ideas. First,tourism should be analyzed as one of the names of power. It is so becausetourism fractures the continuum of reality differentiating the elements; itconstantly names and arranges them into cultural categories. It alsochannels the relations among those elements and engenders a distinctivetime-space binomial (Bakhtin, 1937) that renders these relations meaningfulto people. Tourism gives a peculiar sense to the social life of groups indestinations and, consequently, orientates their daily life practices. Thesecond idea is that tourism is probably the most sophisticated elaboration ofcapitalism. It is a new historical mode of managing reality. It contributes toperpetuate the center–periphery exploitation system and makes feasible theconversion of any place into a desirable destination. It not only provideswith the necessary materiality of transport, room and board, and entertain-ment for customers, but it also commercializes the intangible and producesnew meanings. Thus, to study tourism implies to analyze that complex set ofsociotechnical practices and devices that, linking the desirable and thefeasible, enable certain social groups to spend their leisure time away from

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Culture and Society in Tourism Contexts

Tourism Social Science Series, Volume 17, 57–89

Copyright r 2012 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 1571-5043/doi:10.1108/S1571-5043(2012)0000017006

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their quotidian, including what they do in those places and the socialprocesses induced at their destinations.

Social anthropology is understood here as a pragmatics that ‘‘describescontexts’’ (Fabbri, 1997, p. 161). This chapter is concerned with theproduction of social and cultural distinctions in tourism contexts. It isstructured around some fragmentary observations so as to explain theproduction of meaning and sense in tourism contexts. Following the generalargument of the book, the chapter focuses on territories where the tourismindustry has been present for decades. In these territories a particularFoucaldian order of les mots et les choses (words and things) hashegemonized. In consolidated destinations, such as Spain, tourism becomesthe context of enunciation and, consequently, it acts as a very importantmediator in the understanding of social practices.

The cases guide the reader through this general argument. Starting withthe global revolts of the Arab Spring in their fight for democracy, andending with the commercialization of Holy Week in the Spanish provincialtown of Zamora. Tourism is presented as a context through which prac-tices could be better comprehended. What did the killing of people duringthe Arab Spring in Tunisia or Egypt really mean to certain social andpolitical actors in many Mediterranean destinations? Afterwards twocomplementary examples from Berlin and Seville are discussed. They inviteto reflect on the simultaneity of discourses—and layers of meanings—within the same space–time frame in tourism contexts. In the Berlin case,two readings of the same spot are confronted: social memory versustouristified history. In the Seville, the anthropological character of fieldworking is contrasted with the overwhelming tourism imagery of the cityduring springtime. The next cases are taken from an extensive fieldworkcarried out in the Axarquıa. The starting point is a description of thetourism context of Costa del Sol in the province of Malaga and the digitalEtnoatlas implemented there. The importance of labeling in tourismcontext is followed, showing the locals’ ability to complement the semanticfield of sociocultural memory with the one marked by the managerial logicof tourism. The subsequent cases in the Axarquıa are representativeexamples of how insiders relate to their memories and their territory, andshow the local appropriation of tourism discourse on historical memoryand the continuous appearance of new tourist routes. Accordingly, the caseof the Holy Week in Zamora presents a different view to the traditionalperspective on the issue of commoditization and authenticity. All thesecome to underline that dialogics should be most considered at the time ofstudying tourism.

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58 Culture and Society in Tourism Contexts

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To explain these cases, the notion of ‘‘tourism space’’ is considered(Nogues-Pedregal, 2003). Tourism space is a distinct referential frame;it is a mediator in the production of meaning with a clear nod toChadefaud’s concept (1987). It allows examination of the lived experi-ences of the dialogue between the macro-social structures, theorized asconstrictive, and the micro-social actions, considered to bear enablingproperties. The heuristic notion of tourism space enables the study ofculture in contexts: that compound of practices that acquires its sensewithin a specific group, gives sense to its social life, and distinguishes itfrom other groups. This notion of tourism space as mediator in theconstruction of the cultural, in Appadurai’s sense, correlates somehowwith Picard’s proposal:

one should pay attention to what is at stake with the newmeaning a culture acquires for its bearers by being promotedas a tourist attraction. In other words, to the extent that italters the view that a society takes of itself, tourism reveals theway the native population relates to its memories, to itstraditions, to its values—in short, to its identity (1995, p. 46,emphasis added).

FRAGMENTARY OBSERVATIONS

The Mediterranean Sea, 2010. The totalitarian capitalist AU :1Western teleolo-gical statement about the End of History proved to be wrong too. When AU :2the26-year-old Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in the village ofSidi Bouzid in December 2010, another layer of history was posed onto that‘‘accumulation of layers as thick as the history of distant China’’ that, inBraudel’s words, shapes the Mediterranean world (Braudel, 1985). More-over, at the time of writing (November 2011), the tyranny of the markethas assassinated liberal democracy in Italy and Greece. It is quite likely thatby the time these lines are read, a couple of more countries could be addedto the list.

Against every presumably knowledgeable source, these sudden socialupheavals caught by surprise all national governments and fully fundedinternational security agencies. Confused and disorientated by the currentevents in some Arab countries, Western foreign policy cautiously waits. Onthe contrary, what it is known as the tourism and hospitality industry

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(including international tour operators, hotel chain owners, and localentrepreneurs and politicians at destinations) reacted immediately.

Following the mobile nature of its characteristic interest, the industrymoved elsewhere and channeled tourists and package offers to saferdestinations. Thus, on February 7, several days before Hosni Mubarakresigned, meetings were held in Canary Islands between policymakersresponsible for tourism at local and regional levels and European touroperators (TUI, Thomas Cook, Neckerman, Iberojet, etc.). Due to the flightcancellations to Tunisia or Egypt, authorities and tour operators forsaw a15% increase in tourist arrivals to the Spanish island of Lanzarote.Accordingly, the Patronato de turismo del Cabildo de Lanzarote (the board oftrustees responsible for promoting the island as a destination) has designedan awareness campaign among the local population. The aim is ‘‘to achievethat those unexpected tourists that are to arrive to Fuerteventura by chance,find themselves so amazed during their stay in the islands that, from now on,Fuerteventura will become their first option’’ (Europa Press, 2011; Noticiasde Lanzarote, 2011; emphasis added).

This very same perception of the situation stands out in some otherMediterranean destinations. Collected data show that local and foreignagents of the industry acting in the peripheral countries of this region dailywatch the TV news on this turmoil in a very different way. They consider thefeasibility of the situation from different standpoints, as none of them couldrelate to the demands for democracy of the people. In the Adriatic region,mainly in Croatia, many Germans tourists have cancelled their holidays inEgypt and have chosen Croatia instead. This increase of 24% in arrivals hassurprised even the Croatian Ministry of Tourism. Though most of thesecancelled vacations were redirected to Spain and Turkey, destinations likeCroatia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Italy have somehow benefited too (VecernjiList, 2011a). This shift has affected different market segments: a touristagency representative suggesting that many high school graduates wouldchoose Croatia instead of North Africa because of the riots in Tunisia andEgypt (Vecernji List, 2011b).

Also in Turkey,

Hey Travel Trends Marketing Director Tunc- Goz said in apress statement that the political upheaval in Tunisia wasexpected to increase the number of visitors coming fromEurope to Turkey. ‘‘When this adds up to the already highdemand from the Middle Eastern market, Turkish domestictourists might not be able to find vacant rooms in Turkish

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hotels this summer let alone finding affordable ones.’’ He saiddomestic tourists should act immediately to benefit from earlybooking opportunities. (Hurriyet Daily News, 2011)

Somehow, the effect on countries depicted by Western media asneighbors is also playing its part (Hollier, 1991).

In nearby Greece, foreign tour operators declare that the events inTunisia and Egypt will positively affect its national economy (KayZmerinZ/Kathimerini, February 13, 2011). However, the very same day, under thetitle ‘‘Though evading Egypt, still they do not come to Greece,’’ the pro-socialist party newspaper Eleyerotnpia/Eleftherotypia (February 13, 2011)expresses that in the next coming weeks, European tour operators(specifically refer to TUI and Thomas Cook) would eventually decide whereto redirect their offers to.

This type of capital response is not new. It has been shown that capital iscowardly, fleeing from unpredictability, and political instability is the mostimportant factor in capital flight (Le & Zak, 2006; Lensink, Hermes, &Murinde, 2000). The same movement of market share to competitors in saferregions such as Spain, Greece, or Turkey occurred when the Yugoslavianwar in early 1990s, particularly in Croatia (Mikacic, Hendija, & Marusic,1999; Radnic & Ivandic, 1999). In addition, foreign direct investments intourism activities are even more sensitive: political unrest does not get alongat all with tourism industry (Alsarayreh, Jawabreh, & Helalat, 2010;Sonmez, 1998). But it shies away not only from political turmoil, war,terrorism (Drakos & Kutan, 2003) or direct terrorism against tourists, as inthe case of Egypt during the 1990s; but also from human rights violations,health issues, cultural barriers, crime rates (Lepp & Gibson, 2003), and thenation’s political system, either autocratic or democratic (Neumayer, 2004).All of the above or a combination of these factors affects tourist arrivals.

In spite of the constant presence of instability in the area, theMediterranean region is perceived by tourists as an extremely attractivedestination. According to the World Tourism Organization,

by 2020, 346 million tourists will visit [European] Mediterra-nean destinations [which represents] about 22 percent of allarrivals worldwide. Despite the growth of the Mediterraneanas the world’s largest tourist receiving region, the region’sshare of global tourism is expected to decrease over theperiod 1995–2020 (WTO, 2002, p. 11). Moreover, the 11 non-European Mediterranean countries will increase internationaland domestic tourism arrivals by 2030. (Lanquar, 2011)

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All of this data would not result in anything else but episodic unlessone considers the characteristics of a context where package holidays are,for many local, regional, and state economies, the main mode of inboundtravel and for international tourism the most important source of income.The fact that many Mediterranean countries cannot be reached by car(remoteness, borders, roads, insularity, and the like), places them far fromthe top world’s tourist-generating societies and top expenders (Germanyand the United Kingdom). In the end, this condition is the cause for thecontrol of the main Mediterranean inbound tourism flows by internationaltour operator oligopolistic strategies (Aguilo, Alegre, & Sard, 2003; Cavlek,2005). Strategies that contribute to construct destinations, for example,Marrakech was made a hub of tourism leisure consumption, even fordiasporic visitors, after it become a gateway for low-cost flights from Europe(Wagner and Minca in this volume).

Berlin, 2005. From my fieldnotes I make up this descriptive paragraph:According to the data embedded in the jpg file, the picture was taken withmy Sony DSC-P92 at 10:55 on March 26, 2005. A partially mist coveredPalast der Republik, across the Spree River, shows how cold that morningwas. My wife and I were sitting on a bench gazing at the trees and payingvery little attention to the Marx and Engels statues. For people coming fromthe Mediterranean shores, naked trees are always very attractive. A womanand a little girl were walking toward the monument. There was nothingelse around to look at so I watched them. The woman talked to the girlwho was looking up to her very quietly. Then I held my camera, framedthe composition, clicked the shutter, and froze that very moment. WhenI inspected the picture, I realized what I had captured. I printed it out in anA4 size, hung it in my office, and looked at it for a while. A recurring ideakept coming back to me: is there any distinction between some of thepractices undertaken by a scientific observer of the social reality and those ofa tourist?

This idea, already raised and sharply argued by Malcolm Crick (1985)and partially brought up also by Romhild in the first sentence of her chapterin this volume, was empirically tested on March 29, 1994 in the Spanishnewspaper El Paıs. The caption of the photograph is clear: ‘‘A tourist takinga picture of the marchers during the procession of the brotherhood of SaintGonzalo Parish.’’ What makes this illustration especial is that the man in thepicture was Stanley Brandes, Professor of Anthropology at the University ofCalifornia at Berkeley, who had extensively written on the Iberian Peninsulafolklore and popular religion (Brandes, 1991). Considering that someyears later, he published an article on photographic imagery in Spain

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(Brandes, 1996), one may wonder whether he was doing fieldwork or justtaking a nice shot. Whatever the answer is, it is not relevant to the argumentat hand. The book edited by Boissevain (1996) AU :3shows how local communitiescope with outsiders and, consequently, produce new practices and meanings.Accordingly, this picture illustrates that, in the context of the Holy Weekprocession in Seville, natives, in this case a journalist, will categorize anywhitebeard man with a non-Mediterranean phenotype who happens to takepictures, as a tourist. This simultaneity of categories in tourism contextsreflects the overlapping of the regimes of visibility and invisibility broughtup by Cabot and Lenz in this volume. In their case study, this coexistenceproduces practices and strategies that allow migrants to play ambiguousroles, like pretending to be tourists in the Greek beach of Xios in order toleak through police border controls.

Back to Berlin and to my fieldnote reflections: if I had uploaded to theInternet the picture I took as a memento of my journey, had given detailedinformation on how to reach the spot, described its surroundings for it to beconsumed by anonymous virtual travelers, and recommended on what to door see in Berlin, I would be thought of, and quite likely be treated, as atourist (other surfers could ask about my trip and would expect some kind offeedback from me). On the contrary, had I published the picture in anacademic book or journal, offered a deep analysis of the situation, discussedtheoretical concerns on tourism processes; then, no matter what my initialintention was that early spring morning in the park, I would be thought ofand, quite likely, be treated as a social scientist (other colleagues wouldeither criticize or simply ignore my work). Thus, if logically we can only seethe usage of the results after, can we observers differentiate between a touristgaze and a social scientist study at the time they actually take place? Thoughthe question posed is a tricky one, the answer is a definite one. Opposite tojournalism and news practices, which focus on the present and outdate asfast as new events come into scene, or to the tourist gaze which is lively livedin the present, past events analyzed from social sciences and humanitiesperspective attempt to understand the present all in all interacting with thefuture.

The Marx-Engels-Forum is a project designed by sculptor LudwigEngelhardt. It was inaugurated in 1986 in a public park in the central Mittequartier of Berlin, very close to the Neptun Platz, near the Berliner RotesRathaus (Berlin Red Town Hall). A simple engine-search on the Internetshows that, according to surfers, the Forum is in a tourist area: ‘‘Marx-Engels-Forum—ein ort der ruhe mitten im touristischen Berlin!’’ (a place ofrest in the middle of the touristy Berlin!), or that it is worth visiting for the

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sake of taking photos of the impressive 368 meters high TV Tower(Fernsehturm) located in the very famous Alexander Platz.

The discourse (what it is said, published, or supported by tourists and/orthe industry) can hardly be found on this very spot. Le Guide du Routardpoints out that the ‘‘Marx-Engels-Forum est l’une des places centrales del’ex-Berlin Est, ou se dressent encore les statues des peres du communisme’’(The Marx-Engels Forum is one of the central squares of the former EastBerlin, where the statues of the forefathers of Communism still stand). Inaddition, Lonely Planet mentions several bike and segway tours that pass bythere in their way from or to Brandenburg Tor. There is no reference at all tothe place in the Berlin Official Tourist Site, other than a brief and ironicpolitical reference in the ‘‘Snapshots of Berlin’’ page (http://www.visitberlin.de/en). Yet many tourists go ‘‘to see and grab a nice picture with Marx andEngels’’ as Robert K. recommended (http://www.yelp.com/biz/marx-engels-forum-berlin). Like Karen85 who wrote in her post that the place is ‘‘one ofthe few remaining relics of communism in the city’’ (http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/1eff6d/). Probably she was one of those touristswho had forced Ekaterinburg, another blogger, to write ‘‘attempting to get aphoto without someone else in the frame requires quite a bit of circling andsteely glances’’ (http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/1b83de/). Actu-ally, the meaning of the Forum itself has become an object of negotiationamong Berliners. Some citizens declare that the statues remind them of oldtimes and should be removed; while others argue that they should remainbecause of its historical relevance. The politics of presentation of heritage isvery well documented and good ethnographic accounts have been published(Odermatt, 1996).

J. Collier and M. Collier (1986) showed how much information one couldget on and off films and stills. In our case, the kinesics of the woman andchild converge the contextual relationship of the moment and makes thepicture feasible for a research usage. It seems that the woman and the girl aretourists AU :4: their clothes are not those that are expected of tourists, they carryno bags, no cameras and their behavior is too ordinary. That Saturdaymorning, the woman was probably taking her granddaughter for a walkwhile her parents were at their respective jobs. Her resolute walking towardthe statues was determined by her need to tell her grandchild a story. It is avery private moment; an extremely personal communication betweengenerations. The woman was recalling her social memory and passingit on to the youngest. The communicative link between the grandmotherand the child is present in the kinesics of the moment. While she points at thebronze effigies and slightly bends over the child as to tell her something, the

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impatient girl softly twists her ankles and pays attention to her grand-mother’s explanations. In a very familiar way, she was explaining something(attaching significance to those historical figures and, thus, offering anunderstanding of the world) and unconsciously influencing her grand-daughter’s future practices. Here the woman was producing and makingsense of reality while offering some coherence and continuance to theirlives as distinct from the lives of other people. What did the woman actuallytell the child? What was that experienced member of the group transmittingto the youngster? My German was not fluent enough to carry out anin-depth interview. At best, I could have collected a general overview of thestory.

The Province of Malaga (Andalusia, Spain). During the late 1990s I was amember of the research group Etnomedia of the University of Seville andwas working in a project called A digital ethnographic atlas of Andalusia forthe planning of rural tourism on a CD-Rom (Etnoatlas). The Consejerıa deturismo y deporte (regional tourism and sports ministry) of the Junta deAndalucıa (regional government of Andalusia) financed the project, andAntonio Mandly Robles of the University of Seville and I led it. From July2001 to August 2003, we carried out ethnographic fieldwork in the provinceof Malaga. We took hundreds of pictures, interviewed dozens of peoples,and walked countless kilometers along the roads, especially in the comarcaof Axarquıa. The comarca is a cultural and geographical division with noadministrative jurisdiction (except in some regions) within the organizationof the Spanish state. Its size is smaller than that of a province or an islandcouncil but bigger than a municipality.

The Etnoatlas project focused on the comprehension of socioculturalprocesses in inland ‘‘tourism environments’’ (in territories were tourism isovertly present). We had observed that the geographical continuity ofterritories was being fractured due to the construction of new highways androads and the fencing of traditional routes so as to build estates. AU :5Newterritorial divisions based on the recommendations of the new ‘‘endogenousresources management local agencies’’ were promoted by the EuropeanRegional Development Funds that appeared in the 1990s. Furthermore, avariety of development planning programs had forced new collaborationsamong municipalities. Our aim was straightforward: to provide policy-makers with a tool that could help them to implement new strategiesresponsibly, within the frame of a cultural-ecological (ethnologicallyfriendly) development. The research question was simple: is this manifestterritorial fracture producing a fault in the continuance of the production/reproduction of sense? The geological simile reminds us that the essential

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relation between territories and their inhabitants is based upon differentlayers of meanings that shape the daily life of the latter.

Our theoretical foundations did not really agree with the principles ofteleological dialectics (in which one seeks for a purpose, contradictions are tobe solved in a third stage) and causality (in which there is a steady symmetrybetween cause and effect). Instead we adapted Edgar Morin’s dialogic andrecursive principles to the ethnographies we carried out in tourismenvironments, and stressed that sociocultural processes have their ownlogics (a set of guiding principles for the arrangement of elements), and thatwe have to observe them in the context of concurrence. Accordingly, weargued that tourism induces the appearance of a peculiar chronotope for theconcurrence of these processes (their rhythms and places) (Nogues-Pedregal,2012). Besides, not only is there an overwhelming presence of ‘‘tourismlogics’’ in coastal comarcas (where tourism undoubtedly defines andconstitutes reality), it also determines the definition of policymaking inaspects such as public–private investments, spatial planning, infrastructures,cultural programs, or entrepreneurial strategies in inland comarcas. Thus,the province of Malaga presented itself as a perfect ethnographic territory.Our working hypothesis was at that time (and, still is) that the expansion oftourism activities influences those local practices in the direction that theytend to satisfy tourists’ demands and motivations for traveling. In order toimprove their potentiality as tourism destinations, local policymakers andactors’ coalitions display their charm with the sole aim of generating morearrivals, what we call ‘‘toward the outside.’’ This social beautification ofplaces, gradually led to the social construction of local life through theperceptual and expressive world of the potential tourists previously arrangedin market segments. Therefore, the forms of collective memory recursivelyblur their referential position as a fixing mortar, and the territory becomesperceived, experienced, and understood in similar ways by both outsidersand insiders.

Unfortunately for Spanish citizens, tourism policies in Spain had neverbeen drawn up to meet the locals’ expectations and needs (thinking orlooking ‘‘toward the inside’’ or inwardly). It was designed, as mentionedabove, to satisfy tourists’ demands and motivations, to attract millions ofthem (thinking or looking ‘‘toward the outside’’ or outwardly). For instance,the 2011 State budget items are indicative of this outward tendency: h300million Instituto de Turismo de Espana (the agency responsible for thepromotion of the state abroad) receives h152 million. It is understandablethat the unlimited resources of sun and sea did not require any especialattention or protection. Spain had been blessed with many hours of sun and

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thousands of kilometers of sandy golden beaches. The connections betweenpolitical groups and the tourism industry favored during the technocraticphase of Franco’s regime in the 1960s determined the dependency of Spanisheconomy on tourism (Amer iFernandez, 2006). Very few people criticizedthis helio-thalasso-tropic model and the consequences it induced (GaviriaLabarta, 1974; Jurdao Arrones, 1979; Mandly Robles, 1977). A tourismdevelopment that, in the course of the years, resulted in the perversion of theso-called residential tourism (Aledo, 2008). Policymakers and plannersconsidered no notion of territory, as a delimited space claimed by a group,or landscape, as an aesthetic experience (see Aubert in Aledo et al in thisvolume). Space was just the container, the necessary surface to support thechosen tourism consumption pattern: and as such, the Spanish Mediterra-nean seashore was seen and, consequently, exploited (Vera Rebollo, 1987).The concern regarding the intangible elements was not present at all. Thisconcern was absent until the surfing of an international interest in theimportance of endogenous resources that prevailed in the public discourseon development.

In the early 1980s, the idea of development was tied down to that ofterritory and a sustainable shift transformed the original interest in thepreservation of nature into the managerial concept of environment.Sympathetically, the culture was converted into patrimonio (heritage) as thedeindustrialization process in the European Union (EU) forced the pursuitof new resources and possibilities of economic development and employ-ment, and the service/cultural industry was seen as a solution (Nogues-Pedregal, 2000). The subtle rise of a metaphorical relationship betweenculture and the notion of heritage reduced that which distinguishes humangroups in a contrastive mode (the culture) to its tangible elements. Heritageappeared thus as a ‘‘meta-cultural product’’ (Garcıa Garcıa, 1998) to replaceculture in the public domain. I argue that this conversion, by which discreteand selected elements that are thought to be the cultural part are interest-ingly supported and promoted by policymakers, is especially stronger inmany tourism contexts. These elements are both used as ‘‘depositories’’ (inFrondisi’s usage of the term) of chosen group values and, simultaneously, aseconomic assets to achieve sustainable development.

Particular milestones support this argument. When the UNESCOdeclared the World Decade for Cultural Development (1988–1997) and theEuropean Union stressed culture as a development resource for the regionsthrough financial initiatives and programs such as LEADER, PRODER, orRAPHAEL (Comunidades Europeas, 1998), the importance of heritage wasemphasized as a means to achieve economic development. Furthermore, in

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several international conferences, the World Tourism Organization con-sidered the new potentialities of culture as determinant of the growth oftourism consumption. In April 1999, at the meeting held in Uzbekistan, thequestion addressed was ‘‘how can humanity draw upon the vast reservoir oftourist demand as to benefit the heritage?’’ In 2001, the WTO publishedCultural Heritage and Tourism Development, and in February 2006, themeeting in Yogyakarta (Indonesia) dealt with it. From then on, ‘‘Culture’’appeared as a keyword. One of those systems of thought Williams (1976,p. 87) which referred to organizesing and managinges differences in thepublic and private domains (this is what politics is all about), hadtransformed the binomial culture-tourism into a token for developmentdiscourses in many tourism contexts. Actually, the UNESCO declarations ofWorld Cultural Heritage are managed politically and administratively astourism slogans for increasing tourists arrivals (VV.AA, 2000).

I argue that this cultural connection with the instrumental logic ofsocial life rather than with the expressive sphere through tourismspace (attaching a new meaning), engendered the substantial notion ofheritage. Tourism, as the most refined elaboration of capitalism, notonly colonizes territories and perpetuates a center–periphery order, butalso imposes rhythms, induces meanings, and gives sense to social life.‘‘Culture’’ in these contexts means resource and, consequently, must bemanaged by authorities and expert procedure. As many ethnographicaccounts demonstrate, these guidelines show very little respect for therecognition of authorship or the socioeconomic context of its produc-tion. What leads one to an interesting paradox in tourism developmentplanning: while periphery owns heritage (the resources), the center keepsadministering the expertise.

In this context, our digital atlas faced the problem of geo-referencing(charting on different virtual layers) the cultural as the compound ofpractices that acquires its sense within a specific group, gives sense to itssocial life and distinguishes it from other groups (either collective memory-based or fluid identities). While geo-referencing any location on the planetposes no problem, charting the cultural scene becomes an epistemologicaland methodological issue. This problem was resolved by applying the modelgraphed in Fig. 1 of the Introduction to this volume (page xi) (Fig. 2).

An ethnographic example. On one occasion my colleague AntonioMandly Robles and I were sauntering the hills surrounding the waterreservoir of La Vinuela (Axarquıa), taking photos and commenting on howfast the urbanizing process were neocolonizing the rural areas, when wehappened to meet a shepherd herding his goats. From our location, we could

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look at how a slope was being leveled out to ease the construction of anotherurbanization. We greeted the man and started up a conversation, mostprobably about the weather or the goats. The man, in his late 60s, was not atall in a hurry, and neither were we. The conversation was pleasant and flewover no especial topics. We chatted about our lives and work, and the manexplained that his two older brothers had owned some fanegas (a premetricsurface measure) of land before they sold it some years ago because theirsons rejected this burden job, and that he was the only one who hadmaintained them. Still, the flattening of the hillsides in front of us visiblymarked the speech. As easily as the conversation moved forward, and ourresearch interest led the conversation, the man glided into the logics of themarket and used the metric system to reckon how many plots he could getout of a hectare. The premetric and metric semantic fields were embeddedsequentially and independently in the verbal action. The context ofproduction allowed a dual speech with deictic references to the social world

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Figure 1. Touristified History and Social Memory.


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of which the goatherd was part of (‘‘the world from which we talk’’) and tothe world of the linguistic production that administers the reality that washappening on the slopes of the hills to the front (‘‘the world on which we talkabout’’).

At the time of charting each of these spheres on layers, the fieldworknotes, the practices observed, and the information collected were convertedinto a visual narrative considering three ethnographic layouts. Each layoutrepresented a perspective considering the intentionality of the actors (towhom the practices collected were addressed). These practices could beoriginated by outsiders (for instance a governmental department or a hotelchain) and intended for outsiders (which we called ‘‘from the outside to theoutside’’). Also by locals for tourists, the practices reflect the insiders logicsaddressing outsiders logics (‘‘from the inside to the outside’’); or by locals

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Figure 2. An Anthropologist or a Tourist?Source: El Paıs, March 29, 1994.


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for locals (‘‘from the inside to the inside’’) (Nogues-Pedregal, 2008b). Inshort, the visual narrative of the Etnoatlas digitalized the cultural accordingto the new technological potentialities from an anthropological perspective.It was based upon the idea of blurring the edges between the linearity ofwriting and the graphic limitations of mapping. The method consisted ofbringing in the local actors’ voices live (interviews and interpellations) alongwith the simultaneous usage of still photographs, which are conceived as‘‘partial’’ signs in the context of the distinctiveness of Andalucıa. Thephotographs were sometimes reinforced through the copla (a poetic meterfound in many Spanish popular songs) that opened up the sense to evocationand incisively built the meaning of ‘‘the world from which we talk’’ by meansof the musical identification.

In order to frame the importance of tourism as an economic fact in Spain,the province of Malaga, and the comarca of Axarquıa, a statistical sketchwould be in order.

Spain received more than 52.5 million international tourists in 2010.According to the Cuenta satelite del turismo, the official accountancyindicator of the weight of tourism-related activities in the economy of thecountry, shows that during the last decade tourism represented slightlyabove 10% of the national Gross Domestic Product and between 7% and10% in terms of employment (Instituto de Estudios Turısticos, 2011).Andalucıa is one of the leading destinations in Spain receiving more than21.4 million tourists (37.8% foreigners: 19% from United Kingdom and11% from Germany) who come because of the weather and the beaches.Actually, 68.5% of the hotel accommodation in Andalucıa is along thecoastline, with half of it concentrated in the Costa del Sol. More than half ofthe 28.6 million hotel nights and 51.2% of the 19.764 hotel employees ofAndalucıa are in the Costa del Sol (Consejerıa de Turismo, Comercio yDeporte, 2010). Moreover, the growing presence of the tourism industrysince the 1950s in the western coast of the province of Malaga, alreadylabeled as Costa de Sol at the Ibero-American Exposition (1929) held inSeville, has progressively influenced the economy, the demographictendencies, and the social processes of the whole province. The area inparticular is influential in the cultural and ecological area of Axarquıa,politically drawn and thought of as hinterland of the Costa del Sol (MandlyRobles, 1983).

Axarquıa, from the Arab al-sarqıyya, oriental region, as opposed toal-gharb western part (al-gharb or Algarve, Portugal), is in the easternmostarea of the province of Malaga. In the late 1980s, a new name AxarquıaCosta del Sol timidly started to be promoted by the Asociacion para la

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promocion turıstica de la Axarquıa (APTA), an association created in 1987by the local councilors of the 31 municipalities of the comarca, with its aimunmistakably stated in the name: association for the tourist promotion ofthe Axarquıa. This new label was progressively assumed by differentinstitutions and developing agencies: Consejerıa de turismo, comercio ydeportes (regional tourism, commerce, and sports ministry), the Diputacionde Malaga (provincial council), the Centro de desarrollo rural de la Axarquıa(rural development agency of Axarquıa), or the public enterprise Sociedadde Planificacion y Desarrollo (planning and development agency). TheFoundation MADECA was created in 2005 to manage and promote the Plande actuaciones estrategicas para la provincia de Malaga (Plan of strategicactivities for the province of Malaga). In addition, the Mancomunidad deCosta del Sol-Axarquıa (association of the five municipalities of theAxarquıa by the coast) claims

Axarquıa is also Costa del Sol for everything: funding, publicgrants, planningy The coast of Axarquıa is the forgotten oneby public administrations, and there is a need to considerAxarquıa as Costa del Sol, and, consequently, to provide withespecial financial lines (Minutes of the Territorial MeetingAxarquıa-La Vinuela held on April 21st of 2010 at the HotelLa Vinuela).

The tourism industry, embodied/evinced by entities such as the Patronatoprovincial de turismo de la Costa del Sol (Costa del Sol Tourist Board) or theAsociacion de empresarios hoteleros de la Costa del Sol (Costa del SolHotelier’s Association), also support this position.

There is no doubt about the instrumental purposes of a label that mergesthe historical region of Axarquıa with that of Costa del Sol. Axarquıa is aname that belongs to the realm of the memory shared by the inhabitants ofthe comarca (or ‘‘identity’’) and it has sense for insiders (see Cocco in thisvolume). On the contrary, Costa del Sol is a clear-cut commercial brandaddressed to market the area as a destination in line with the developmentpolicies during the early 20th century in Spain. Actually, this interest forforeign tourism (toward the outside) has shaped the peculiarities of Spainas a consumer society since 1905 when the Comision Nacional para fomentarlas excursiones turısticas y el recreo del publico extranjero (Nationalcommission for the promotion of tourist excursions and the recreation ofthe foreign public) was created (Gutierrez, Callejo Gallego, & ViedmaRojas, 2005).

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According to the Diputacion’s promotion, the AxarquıaCosta del Sol

is a region of enormous potential as far as tourism is con-cerned, and one in which the visitor will find a wealth ofexpansive natural areas such as mountain ranges, hills, slopesand cliffs, as well as a wide range of local cuisine and amagnificent cultural heritage.

It gets an increasing presence of second residences of European citizensand the creation of camping places and rural accommodations (Ceder-Axarquıa, 2008). In December 2005, the Junta de Andalucıa approved thePlan de dinamizacion del producto turıstico Axarquıa (Plan for the promotionof the tourist product of Axarquıa) which has represented an investment ofh4,155,000 for the 2006–2010 period. Though the final report is yet to bepublished, it seems clear that both the number and the quality of theestablishments and bed-places resulted in an upward trend. It is interestingto note that this general tendency moves toward small accommodationfacilities. This highlights the rising role of inland comarcas as well as draftingthe new location pattern in the coastal destinations. For all these reasons, wefocused the Etnoatlas project in the comarca of Axarquıa.

Historical/cultural memory Archez (Axarquıa,Spain). Amidst the peaksand the narrow valleys of the Sierra of Bentomiz, the history of the Castilianconquest of al-Andalus at the very end of the 15th century and the sub-sequent uprisings of the 16th can be found in every village. In November1491, the capitulations between Abu Abdullah Muhammad XII, shortenedto Boabdil by Castilian speakers, the last sultan of al-Imarah Gharnatah(Nasrid Emirate of Granada) and The Catholic Monarchs, Queen Isabella Iof Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, granted a set of rights includingthose of religious tolerance and respect of the andalusıes (people AU :6ofal-Andalus) properties and dwellings. However, due to the political pressuresfrom the Catholic Church, especially due to Cardinal Cisneros’ zeal, and theinterest of the Hispano-Christian aristocracy in the recently conqueredlands, many of the items were soon abandoned. Social tension, accompaniedby direct repression, provoked riots in many territories of the Kingdom ofGranada. It was the perfect excuse to rescind the rights granted by thecapitulations. It also convinced the Monarchs to decree in February of 1502the rule that forced Hispano-Muslims to choose between deportation andbaptism. Most of them were Christianized, and the former Mudejares (fromHispanic-Arab muda �g �gan or AU :7‘‘domesticated’’) the name given to those placedunder the cultural category of Hispano-Muslims living under the rule of

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Hispano-Christians, was replaced by the still pejorative term of Moriscos or‘‘new-Christians.’’ Other cultural denominations such as tagarino (fromtag�arı, ‘‘on AU :8the frontier’’) used to refer to those Moriscos that could not beculturally distinguished from the Hispano-Christians, or elche (from ilc,‘‘non-Muslim foreigner’’) to refer to those Christian that had apostatized(Maıllo Salgado, 1982). One can see the use of these terms in the the firstparagraph of the Chapter XLI ‘‘In which the captive still continues hisadventures’’ of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

Later on, the emergence of the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterraneanwas perceived as a threat by some European countries, and King Philip IIfelt himself heartened by some of his councilors to promulgated in 1567 alaw aimed to wipe out any trace of Moorish distinctiveness in Spain. Thisharassment inflamed Moriscos, aggravated their social status, and collabo-rated to break out some virulent episodes in the Sierra de Bentomiz duringthe war of the Alpujarras (1568–1571). Once defeated by the royal troops,the villages were repopulated with ‘‘old-Christians’’ and the Moriscos weredispersed throughout Spain. This forced many of them to resist in the sierrasbecoming Monfıes, a term from Arab-Hispano Munfı or ‘‘outlaw/exiled’’(Cabrillana Ciezar, 1989). The history of the Moriscos in Spain was officiallyterminated in April 1609 when Philip III proclaimed their expulsion.

The cultural memory of a history of domination and repression carriedout during many centuries against the legitimate dwellers, easily found itsecho and was reproduced among the inhabitants of comarca with aperipheral self-perception constructed during the last decades against theCosta del Sol (Mandly Robles, 1983). Albeit a new strategy resembling acomarca identity was also fostered by the progressive incorporation of thecomarca to the logics of a marketed tourism in search for new territories.Glazed tiles with selected paragraphs, some extracted from Luis del Marmolde Carvajal’s chronicle Historia del [sic] rebelion y castigo de los Moriscosdel Reyno de Granada, 1600 (History of the uprising and punishment ofthe Moriscos of the Granada Kingdom), and illustrative paintings about thehistorical events described above, decorate many street corners in thevillages of the comarca. The tiles are intentionally placed and their positiongenerate different (re)actions if analyzed considering the role of tourismspace in the production of sense and meaning as is stated in this chapter. Forinstance, this tile in the village of Canillas de Aceituno (Figs. 3 and 4) islocated in a picturesque spot of a steep brick-red stairway decorated withgeranium flowerpots hanging from whitewashed walls. It narrates how ‘‘thesocial, economic and religious demands exerted over the beaten after theChristian conquest of the Kingdom of Granada, provoked discomfort and


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Figure 3. Historical Memory in a Picturesque Spot.

Figure 4. On the Moriscos Rebellion.


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a Morisco rebellion in 1568’’ among the citizens of nearby villages and it wasbrutally defeated in June 1569.

This mode of heritage management informs tourists about the historicalbackground of the comarca and connects locals with their own past too. Thedouble use of heritage is both complementary and simultaneous. It takes careof the continuance of the production of sociocultural meanings because itreinforces the assumption of ‘‘a’’ history among insiders, and acknowledgesthat history can also be object of a gaze among tourists in search ofsomething other than sea and sun. Two layers of meanings deposited onthings that, through tourism space, orientate social practices in differentsenses: people either take photograph of them or feel proud of what theymean and embellish the setting. It should be noted that all of them arewritten in Spanish, and many of them in real old style, which makes itextremely difficult for non-skilled Spanish speakers to fully understand thestory being narrated. However, all the foreign tourists interviewed agreedthat, despite the language barrier, they liked the tiles: the drawings resemblethe medieval manners and are visually very artistic.

Archez, located by the Turvilla River at the foot of the Sierras of Tejedaand Almijara, is one of the villages often mentioned in those glazed tiles.Archez is one of the smallest (339 neighbors in 2010) villages in theAxarquıa. Touristically labeled as the Jewel of the Marinids or Benimerins(a Berber dynasty from the 11th through the 13th century in al-Andalus),Archez is included in the Ruta del Mudejar (route of the Mudejar) given itsurban structure and the 14th century brick-red alminar (minaret).

At the entrance of the bridge accessing the village over the valley, guestsare invited to enjoy a relaxing atmosphere under a coffered ceiling at aMudejar inn along while savoring the typical Morisco cuisine, and theglobalized taste of international cooking too (Fig. 5). When compared to theglazed tile, the billboard (a historical impossibility) is the perfect example ofhow social memory is mediated through tourism space. While the tileproposes a reading of the history of the comarca that underlines itsimportance for locals (toward the inside), the billboard falls back on historyas a resource to attract tourists (toward the outside). The simultaneity of theMozarabes (Christian-Visigoth people under the Cordoba Caliphate ruleduring the 11th century), the Mudejar traits (13th–15th centuries) and theinternational 20th century cooking, can possibly occur within ‘‘the worldon which we talk about’’: the realm of the linguistic production. Archez isimagined as an orientalized ‘‘tourist setting’’ and it is used by locals toconstruct the desirable through which tourists are expected to be seduced tovisit the village.

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This representation of the memory induces the way in which locals ‘‘see’’themselves, how they construct their own history, and how they projectthemselves into the future. It is worth noting that the signboard does notemploy the term Moriscos that, as mentioned above, seems to be the ethnicterm that better fitted the population of the comarca according to theconquerors’ manner of managing differences after 1502. Most recently, whilevideotaping a fieldwork interview with a gypsy informant, she used the wordMorisco to describe a situation in which she and her family were treated asif ‘‘we were Moriscos,’’ in the sense of being rejected. The social and culturalconsequences of the phenotypic resemblance between both ethnic groupshave been properly studied since the first laws ruled the contact among themin the mid-16th century, particularly because gypsies were not prosecutedfor religious motives (Garcıa-Arenal, 1978). Yet, this historical misplacing issurely a result of the fact that the term still has a pejorative sense in currentSpanish language. Additionally, in Spanish historiography the arte Mudejar,characterized by the use of brick and wood carving, is so overtly respectedand appreciated that the label Mudejar is being indiscriminately used withno respect for historical accuracy and has replaced more precise denomina-tions as Moriscos or Hispano-Muslim art. Indeed, there are hundreds of

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Figure 5. Mixing History, Memory, and Desires.


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academic research published on it, as a simple search in the Spanish openaccess academic database Dialnet displays, or the arte Mudejar of the townof Teruel has been promoted by the UNESCO as a World Heritage, anddozens of rutas Mudejares traverse Spain, the use of Moriscos is rarelynoticed in Spanish tourism contexts.

Probably the sole exception appeared on July 10, 2007 in the webjournal 20minutos.es. It was brief news on the glazed tiles of the village ofFrigiliana entitled ‘‘A jewel of Morisco art’’ inviting to stroll through theMudejar neighborhood of the Arab urban structure. Jose Manuel, ablogger, felt himself demeaned and shook this comment off saying that theonly correct fact in this statement is that Frigiliana is a jewel, but the useof the terms Moriscos, Mudejar, and Arab are not at all correct. The newscould have clarified that the tiles commemorate the uprising of theMoriscos against the injustice of King Philip II’s policies and the massacreof thousands of people after the defeat. If we are to talk about art, then wecould simply say Andalusian art or Andalusı if we are talking aboutmedieval times, because there is nothing Arab in Frigiliana. We sayMorisco village, but the Morisco art is never mentioned; only the Mudejarart is. The Moriscos were our forebearers forced to become Christians, andtheir ‘‘art’’ was the traditional Andalusian way of life that still goes on. Weare still Moriscos.

It is a criticism that reveals a reaction against the prevailing discoursetoward the outside and the defense of insider’s cultural sense of memory.

Venta El Cruce (Axarquıa, Spain). Ruta del Mudejar is just one amongother tourism routes. In both the geographical and the desirable dimensions,many of these routes traverse the province of Malaga (Figs. 6 and 7): to theleft, the driver can take the ‘‘route of the olive oil and the hills, to the right,‘‘the route of the sun and the avocado.’’ The names are familiar to anyone inthe comarca. In fact, along the coastal areas of the provinces of Malaga andGranada, subtropical trees and shrubs as Persea americana (avocado),Annona cherimola (custard apple), or Mangifera indica (mango) represent upto h164 million in Andalucıa (2010) and, only in Malaga, are spread out13,000 ha (69.23% of avocado). The provincial surface of olive trees (withvarieties of picual and hojiblanca, as well as the endogenous verdial, formaking olive oil, and alorena) covers 123,000 ha and produces 60,037 tm ofoil (annual average for the 2006/2009 period). The Montes de la Axarquıa,located in the western part of the comarca (including the municipalities of ElBorge, Almachar, Iznate, Macharaviaya, Moclinejo and Totalan, andsections of Colmenar, Comares, Riogordo, Cutar, Benamargosa, Benamo-carra, Rincon de la Victoria, and Velez-Malaga) and lower than the easternsierra, spread out between the river Guadalmedina and the fertile vega


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(lowlands) of the Velez river with elevations ranging from 500 to 1,000mabove sea level reaching 35–50% gradient (Ceder-Axarquıa, 2007); andthe international airport of Malaga received 3.117 hours of sun in 2009. Thedetailed agricultural surface and production, the orography, and the solar

Figure 6. The Mythical Map of Desirabilites.

Figure 7. Appropriation of the Tourism Discourse to Demand PoliticalAttention.


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radiation data are included to show that these routes are intrinsicallyconnected with the ecology of the territory.

This ecological connection, however, acquires sense solely for driversfamiliar with the territory. Any outsider equipped with only a regular mapcould not figure out that the villages of Riogordo, Colmenar, Alfarnate,Alfarnatejo, Periana, Alcaucın, or La Vinuela are on the left-hand side; andthat El Rincon de la Victoria, Torre del Mar, Velez-Malaga, Benamargosa,Benamocarra, Iznate, or Macharaviaya are hidden behind the exotic tropicalindicator. On this occasion, I did not georeference the photograph: that daywe were driving south, so the capital cities of Malaga and Granada were tothe right, and the indicators on a t-cross of a secondary road with the A-356.Anyhow, none of these administrative details of Reality are important iftourists are to follow the map of their myths (Dufour, 1977). This is alandscape of desirability projected onto some group’s territory.

Driving south in the A-356 direction, 3 km before reaching Velez-Malaga,by the Venta El Cruce, there is a crossing on the right to take the MA-3113.There, on August 2002, our research team took another picture showing theusual administrative directions of Reality. The so-called Aeropuerto de laAxarquıa, in reality the private airfield Leoni Benabu belonging to the RoyalAeroclub of Malaga located in the hamlet of Trapiche, is right in thatdirection. Further ahead are the settlements of Triana and the localities ofBenamargosa, Cutar, Comares and Almachar. All of these are beautifulsmall white villages increasingly dependent on tourism.

I still recall the man staring at us while wondering what we were shootingat. The homemade indicator of the Ruta del Socavon (route of the holesin the road) competes with the traffic signs. Each administrative entity islocated in the proper time-space narrative and is reachable thanks todetailed information about distances: Cutar is 14 km and Almachar 22 km.The red arrow, on the contrary, denounces the incompetence of politiciansand a vindication of the rights of citizenship. The arrow is not intended topoint toward any location: it is a cry against oblivion. It confronts theadministration with Reality in terms of measurable distances and locationswith elusive citizens’ hopes.

The analysis reveals two confronting discourses within the same state ofaffairs, however. The arrow points to a new direction in territorial devel-opment not just focused toward the outside. In addition, it makes so byreferring to the unique logic that political authorities seem to understand inthe comarca of Axarquıa Costa del Sol: that of the routes. Social groups intourism environments know that these routes are always accompanied byinvestments, better infrastructures and power supplies, general improvement

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of the surroundings and, among other things, tourists will boost localindustries and commerce. To be awarded an official marker, like a route,makes a difference. In addition, as stated at the beginning, this is whatpolitics is all about: it fractures reality, creating distinctions among ‘‘whathappens’’ and policies make facts visible (things, people, actions, territories,etc.) by inducing connections among them, and managing the potentialitiesof each difference to become (by funding and/or naming).

The board is a cry Against that construction of a tourism landscape ofdesire, that claims for the feasibility of the construction of the road toameliorate locals’ daily life. In a certain way, this homemade sign remindsme of Foucault’s (1973) AU :9essay on Magritte Ceci n’est pas une pipe. There is nosuch thing as a Ruta del Socavon on that direction, but still we play along asif it exists. It is an epistemological rebellion rather than a political complaint.The arrow maintains a dialogic hegemony between the two worlds of speech(the ‘‘world from which we talk’’ and the ‘‘world on which we talk about’’)within their context of enunciation: the tourism context of Costa del Sol.A territory pierced by dozens of routes. This is the only context where such amarker acquires its full sense.

I approach the use of the arrow as one of those images, stories, andlegends that manifest the way in which people ‘‘imagine’’ their social milieu(Taylor, 2004). The homemade indicator expresses that people in thehinterland of the Costa del Sol have learnt that the desirability of touristsmay increase the feasibility of their own expectations for quality of lifeand, thus, legitimized tourism as a modern social image. With the ironicappropriation of the hegemonized logic that markets the territory, theneighbors seem to acknowledge the rule of the game. There are differentways, however, complementary, of consuming the territory. Nevertheless,groups cope with social situations in many ways. In Carboneras (Almerıa,Spain), for instance, villagers demonstrated much in favor of the hotel builtwithin the limits of the Natural Park of Cabo de Gata-Nijar and against thegovernmental order of demolition and the environmentalists arguments(Nogues-Pedregal, 2008b). On one occasion, I was talking about how the oldsavor of the small fishing village of Zahara de los Atunes (Cadiz, Spain) wasbeing altered due to the attention locals were paying to tourists’ arrivals, oneof the informants exclaimed ‘‘but, Antonio, I want to poo in a toilet too!!’’In Antissa, a small village in the Greek island of Lesvos, the municipality setup a billboard at a sharp U-turn curve inviting drivers to ‘‘come to visit oursquare.’’ Clearly, the relationship between the use value placed on resourcesby locals and the exchange value placed on those same resources by thoseconcerned with tourism industry is an ongoing competition in most cases

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(Boissevain & Selwyn, 2004). Though living in different language-games aswe do, this dialogical process is particularly interesting when the logic of themarket, disguised in tourism apparel, comes to manage intangible resources.

Zamora (Spain). The local authorities of the town had accepted ‘‘City ofthe Romanic’’ or ‘‘Pearl of the Romanic’’ as their new motto. It had beenpresented by the Sociedad mixta de turismo, comunicacion y promocion deZamora (Joint venture of tourism, communication, and promotion ofZamora). The motto might not be an exaggeration. ‘‘With 23 temples withinits municipal district, and 14 churches in the historical quarter, this is thetown with the highest number of Romanic temples in Europe, and yet mostof them are open and accessible.’’ In the 2010 annual report, the president ofthe joint venture quotes Bauman’s concept of liquid society and merges itwith Heraclitus of Ephesus’ fluvial metaphor to describe Zamora as a liquidcity: ‘‘the town flows as a long-lasting river, always the same river but withdifferent water’’ (Sociedad mixta, 2011, p. 13) still rooted in its traditions butadapting to modernity.

Zamora is the capital of one of the nine provinces of the autonomousregion of Castilla y Leon. Situated in the northwestern part of the centralplateau (bordering the corner with Portugal), Zamora is a medium-sizedprovince in Spain. Divided in two by the river Duero, the landscape variesfrom the smoothness of the fertile cereal plains of the historical region ofTierra de Campos (literally, ‘‘land of fields’’) up to the mountain peaks of theglacier Lake of Sanabria Natural Park. The province of Zamora (194,214population in 2010) is a predominantly dry land with a farming economy.Despite the increase in the number of foreign residents, it suffers a constantdepopulation process. Nonetheless, Zamora is, most importantly for myargument, traversed by the Camino Mozarabe and the Ruta or Vıa de laPlata (Silver route or way) the two oldest Christian routes toward theApostle Jacob’s Tomb in Santiago de Compostela, and key economic andpolitical groups look at tourism as a passport for development, to borrow deKadt’s classic title.

The Ruta de la Plata, whose denomination against the popular belief isnot related to the transport of silver during Roman times but with the Arabword al-balat (cobbled paving), which is an ancient road dating back to the2nd century BC that crosses the western part of Spain. There is a consensuson the fact that the original road linked Emerita Augusta (Merida, Caceres)with Asturica Augusta (Astorga, Leon). It was designed to ease the troopmovements during the war against the Lusitanian caudillo Viriathus; indeed,it runs parallel to the present frontier with Portugal. However, during thenext centuries the road extended south to Seville and Cadiz and north to

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Gijon (Asturias). It roughly corresponds to the actual A-66 highway, which,in turn, modernized the former N-630. These transformations haveprovoked heated academic discussions among scholars regarding whichtowns can be included in the Vıa or Ruta de la Plata. This scholar inclinationtoward logomachy has fed, and in turn is fed, by passionate argumentsamong politicians of the territories that claim their ‘‘historical’’ right to usethe label as a tourism promotion. For instance, since ‘‘there is not a singlemiliarium (Roman milestone) in the region,’’ the major of Astorga excitedlycriticized the Councilor of Culture and Tourism of the autonomousgovernment of Asturias when, during a promotional campaign, she claimedGijon was the head of the Vıa de la Plata. The issue of naming the elementsand inducing the links among them in tourism contexts has become socrucial that most tourism policies focus their efforts on an endless promo-tional campaign. Casually, a new label is being used http://laviadelaplata.es/la_via_de_la_plata.php?ididioma¼2&tipo¼viaplata to promote ‘‘the mostauthentic and ancestral’’ Silver way: Iter ab Emerita Asturicam, whichliterally means ‘‘road from Merida to Astorga’’ and comes from the title ofhistorian Roldan’s Hervas (1971) book.

This important corridor has been used and modified over centuries.During the 8th century, the Arabs used it for their swift conquest of theIberian Peninsula. The Muslim ruler al-Mansur, known as Almanzor, took itduring the campaign to sack Santiago de Compostela in 997, when hecaptured the bells of the Cathedral and melted them to make lanterns forthe Mosque of Cordoba. The connection of the province of Zamora withthe Camino de Santiago started soon after the tomb of Saint Jacob’s wasdiscovered. At least since the 11th century the road was followed by theMozarabes of al-Andalus pilgrimage, which explains the presence inthis province of the oldest hospitals (Latin, Hospitalis, ‘‘for the guest, thestranger’’) offering shelter to the pilgrims to Santiago. Nowadays thesehospitals have been converted through the mediation of tourism spaceand have adapted to ‘‘the new conditions under which time and space areorganized so as to connect presence and absence’’ (Giddens, 1990, p. 14).These new hospitals, under a variety of denominations (albergue, hostal,hotel rural), are used by pilgrims in many different and new ways (Prat,2011). Most of them are on the Internet and many are equipped with Wi-Fitoo. Some have a rucksack door-to-door pick-up service. An updatedbellhop carries the luggage to the next hostel in which a room is reserved, sothat the tourist can enjoy the Camino with no burden at all.

When certain elements are identified, distinguished, and connected withthe notion of development, their feasibility to boost the local economy and

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to stop depopulation requires a professional guidance. The Sociedad mixtade turismo, comunicacion y promocion de Zamora created in July 2009 as ajoint venture between the municipality (90%) and the Asociacion Zamoranade Empresarios de la Hostelerıa (10%) (Zamora Hotelier’s Association) aimsto manage local tourism infrastructure, supervise the strategies in policy,attend tourists, organize events and conferences, and search for financial aidto position Zamora as an inland destination.

Long before ‘‘Zamora, liquid town’’ came a fashion slogan in apromotional campaign, the Semana Santa (Holy Week) has always beenthe main social event for zamoranos. There are historical references to thecelebration of the Semana Santa in Zamora, which can be traced back tothe 13th century, and the oldest brotherhood in Spain is said to be theHermandad de la Vera-Cruz (Latin Lignum-Crucis). From Friday of Sorrowsthrough Easter, 17 brotherhoods go on procession through the streets,when roughly 200,000 people walk the streets of the city center shoppingand consuming, restaurants are full, and hotels reach full occupancy.Considering that only 66,000 inhabitants live in town, the visibility andthe contact with tourists are unavoidable. Their economic incidence isunquestionable.

According to many insiders, the promotion of the Holy Week as a reasonto visit Zamora, assisted by the more general secularization process,generates the idea that ‘‘things are not as they used to be, because there is norespect toward the processions and the religious fervor, revealed in thesilence and austerity of the public during those days, is gone’’ as manyinformants declared. According to some local social groups, the meaning ofHoly Week has been altered because the consequences (public actions andbehaviors) connected to the processions are not the expected ones. Since itwas first filmed by August and Louis Lumiere in 1898, the Semana Santa ofZamora is the object of thousands of photographs and hours of videotapesevery year. Tourism has been relevant to center the attention on it. HolyWeek was already being promoted during the post-civil war period, as in1946 the tourism information center was entirely refurbished (Viloria, 1946).The Museo de la Semana Santa opened in 1964 and was fully renewed in1994. Since the Holy Week was granted in 1986, the honorary distinction ofFiesta for International Tourist Interest given by the Spanish Ministryof Industry, Tourism, and Trade, it was managed as the main resourceand ‘‘a new Holy Week based on tourism has appeared in Zamora’’(Ferrero-Ferrero in Sala, 2008).

The Junta-Pro Semana Santa is the association of the Holy Weekbrotherhoods. Created in 1897 to enhance the recruitment of new brothers,

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nowadays channel the public funding appropriated for the Holy Week andtends to restrain some penchants for commoditization. On the opposite side,the daily newspaper La opinion de Zamora (April 17, 2011) argues that theSemana Santa ‘‘must be taken out of the treasure chest’’ and be highlypromoted as it is vital for the Gross Local Product. All those ‘‘involved in acelebration where religious, cultural but also economic interests cometogether’’ should be aware of this need. A debate wrought up by a formerfervent brotherhood member on a magazine column titled ‘‘A passion Irenounced to feel’’: ‘‘y but if my Zamora needs of its Holy Week not to diein the Calvary, crucified in the timber of oblivion, I shall lend my pen toextol its virtues and beauty’’ (El dıa de Zamora 0046:IV).

In this context, a forceful graffiti appeared on some streets in April 2008,retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ocellum_duri/2490840570/. Itis self-explanatory and needs not too much more than a little description.Jesus Christ nailed to a cross is stretched out by anonymous dotted headsand a mighty phrase that attracts passers-by: ¿Habre muerto solo para salvarel turismo? (Have I died only to save tourism?). It is visibly intended againstthe world of consumption induced by the laws of tourism market and theinstrumental action. Still, to conclude that Holy Week in Zamora is justanother case of cultural commoditization (Greenwood, 1972) provoked bytourism would be misleading. An analysis of the broader sociopoliticalcontext would help to unveil some traits of the incessant process of meaningproduction in tourism contexts (Fig. 8).

In December 2010 one of the town wall gates was officially renamed in aprotocol ceremony: ‘‘the door of Treachery’’ became the ‘‘door of Loyalty.’’The reason for this change goes back to October 1076 when the noblemanVellido Dolfos had deserted a beleaguered Zamora, killed the king Sancho IIof Castilla in his pavilion, and reentered the town through that gate. Soonafter, the Castilian troops raised the siege and Zamora was freed.Nevertheless, the historical reading of the events imposed by Franco’sregime had elevated Castilla as the kernel of Imperial Spain, and portrayedDolfos as the traitor par excellence. After Franco’s death, during thetransition to democracy, the negotiations that were held in 1983 for thecreation of the autonomous region of Castilla y Leon were intended toappease the historical frictions between the former kingdoms of Leon andCastilla. Not surprisingly, no town in the region is officially recognized asthe capital in the statute of autonomy, and the consejerıas (regionalministries) are tidily distributed over the nine provinces. However, thepredominance of Castilians’ interests during the process placed the Junta(government) and the Cortes (parliament) in Valladolid, and heightened the

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identity of Leoneses. From then on, any policy designed by the government,particularly in those elements where group identity are better expressed(cultural heritage), is discredited as something Castellano.

In this context, the Semana Santa acquires the sense of being the publicdemonstration that Zamora is not Castilla. Indeed, most Zamoranosperceive as a menace the ‘‘construction of a separate Castilian HolyWeek’’—identified with the one created ex novo by archbishop Gandaseguiduring Franco’s National Catholicism—and the promotion as a tourismproduct made by the Junta of Castilla y Leon (Alonso Ponga in Sala, 2008).This is a threat that, in turn, negatively affects tourist arrivals and, hence,local economy. The perception that the regional government is ruining theSemana Santa is present in Zamoranos debates (http://foros.elnortedecas-tilla.es/trata-junta-arruinar-semana-santa-zamora-t32862.html). Journals,scholars, and politicians insist, every now and then, that the mode ofinterpreting the Passion of Christ is not as in Castilla: neither the sobrietyand severity played the same role, nor the religious images areLate Castilians Renaissance like in Valladolid (La Opinion de ZamoraMarch 8, 2010).

The graffiti may persuade scholars to turn to the notion of ‘‘commodi-tization of culture’’ to explain tourism in Zamora. Much on the contrary,I see that this case proves that cultural events become a social field where

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Figure 8. ¿Habre muerto solo para salvar el turismo?


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different groups, according to their types of capital, confront their views ofsociety, and negotiate meanings through tourism space.

CONCLUSION

The cases discussed attempt to test the notion of tourism space as ameaningful mediator, with the intent of sheding light to the construction ofthe cultural—in the adjectival sense claimed by Appadurai (1996)—intourism destination societies.

Tourism is a human practice based upon the desire to experience‘‘distances’’ from everyday reality (Elands & Lengkeek, 2000). Diaphoro-tropism (attraction for variance) requires a certain degree of material andtechnological development to be feasible. In this process of bringing abouttourists’ desires, a vast range of social and economic actors are involved.Broadly speaking, the industry provides the basics—transport, accommoda-tion (room and board), and recreation and entertainment—to open up thepossibility of meeting tourists’ desires. Groups, territories, and interests areconfronted and, thus, privileged one over another, depending on selectedcriteria. The example of the Arab Spring shows that the industry channelstourists’ flows according to the specific interests of securing benefits. Localactors and coalitions (authorities, entrepreneurs, associations, and the like)in destinations react consequently. Still, in most Mediterranean destinations,the local role in the supply chain is limited to room and board and, inparticular, to the production and updating of entertainment for tourists.This chapter focuses on the latter aspect and on how it plays a role in themode locals make sense of their everyday life (including culture, history, andmemory).

Following the general argument of the book, the discussion is focused onterritories where tourism industry has been present for decades. Tourism isapproached as a special context through which elements and practicesacquire meaning and orientate social action. The chapter illustrate two mainideas: one, that tourism is another name for power in the sense that it setsapart, names, and categorizes cultural elements, second , that tourism is themost sophisticated and refined elaboration of capitalism since it commer-cializes even the intangible.

The examples discuss some specific manifestations of power in tourismcontexts, in particular, the appropriation of tourism discourse by locals. Forinstance, the overwhelming presence of routes that reshape the territoryaccording to tourist desires in the Costa del Sol is used by locals to demand

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political attention in the Axarquıa. The management of intangible elementsunder an orientalized discourse of Mudejares and Mozarabes, against thesilenced memory of Moriscos is reflected in the the billboard at the entranceof the village of Archez, These appropriations are dialogically performed.For many local groups, tourism brings economic development and comfort,and, thus, they accept that territories and cultural memories could becommercialized: ‘‘I want to poo in a toilet too!’’ as an informant onceexclaimed in the fishing village of Zahara de los Atunes. Some of theexamples underline the local interplay with the rules of the games imposedby tourism capitals. The case of the fervent brotherhood member whoaccepts to take the Holy Week ‘‘out of the treasure chest’’ in Zamora, or thedemonstration of the people of Carboneras in defense of a hotelconstruction in the Natural Park have been mentioned. Besides, insiderscomplement the semantic field of sociocultural memory with the one markedby the managerial logic of tourism, as the simultaneous use of fanegas (theworld from which we talk) and square meters (the world on which we talkabout) made by the shepherd in the Axarquıa exemplifies.

Rather than relying on an essentialist view of culture, the notion oftourism space allows one to approach social and cultural processes from adialogic perspective. Understanding the cultural, as a way to treatdifferences, through tourism space may explain why human groupssometimes base their historical continuance upon those ‘‘depositories’previously selected by tourism discourse for promotion. The Ruta de laPlata, for instance, has been constantly renewed, refurbished, and updatedfor different purposes during the centuries. Nowadays, and given itsdiscovery as a main tourism resource for the regions, many towns vindicatetheir historical rights to make use the name of the road to promote theirown cultural heritage. This confrontation of territories, groups, andinterests in a tourism context (such as inland Spain) has recently turned thecustomary name of the road into Iter ab Emerita Asturicam. In addition,the identity of Zamora, traced back to the Middle Ages kingdom, has usedthe religious processions of Holy Week as a social arena to oppose thehomogenous touristic image presented by the Castilian government ofValladolid. In the glazed tiles of the Axarquıa, the history of the repressionof the Moriscos during the 16th century acquires a different sense for localsbecause of the tourists’ presence. These cases demand a new approachsince they show that patrimonialization of culture should not be analyzedonly from a top-down frame or the habitual commoditization perspective.That complex set of sociotechnical practices and devices called ‘‘tourism’’not only acts as a repressive agent that imposes itself, but also induces

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the appearance of new meanings and elements where to place the sense ofidentity.

For these reasons, it has been argued that tourism is another name forpower. It is broadly accepted as the road to development in many territories.It consumes tangible elements by means of spatial occupation. It induceshow to deal with/manage differences (Otherness), it resignifies the culturaleven for insiders, and it defines reality for it conditions what is feasible andwhat is desirable. The notion of ‘‘tourism space’’ is used as an heuristicnotion to analyze how tourism induces connections between facts, disclosessome and hides other, and manages differences. Can this approach totourism as a mediator help to redefine what, following Ortega y Gasset’sperspectivism, one may call ‘‘social circumstances’’ through the encourage-ment of certain meanings of certain selected elements or practices that mayinduce people to do/say/think certain things instead of others? Can tourismmodify the sense of daily life by simply turning Marx and Engels into ‘‘thefathers of communism,’’ the Arab Spring movements into a businessopportunity, the Moriscos expulsion into nothingness, the Holy Week intoan attraction to stop depopulation in Zamora, or an anthropologicalfieldwork into a funny tourist remark? This chapter shows how some aspectsof reality might be better understood by considering tourism as a context.Tourism is not an outside agent located in an outer space that endowsmeaning to facts, but a context through which meaning is mediated and, inits use, orientates social practices.

Acknowledgments—I would like to acknowledge Jaka Repic and EstherCampos for their help and their translation of the Croatian and Greeknewspapers. I am most grateful to the Spanish journal El Paıs for grantingpermission to reproduce the page, as well as for providing me with a higher-quality reproduction than the old photocopy I had in my possession.

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Documents

When the Desirable and the Feasible Converge Through Tourism Space