Description
While in countries such as Switzerland and France tourism had already been consolidated in the 19th century as an economic and cultural vector, at the beginning of the 20th century in Spain tourism was still an incipient, marginal activity lacking public regulation or organised national promotion. However, it was beginning to attract the attention of both political agents and businessmen at a municipal or regional level, since it promised a double benefit: economic and reputational. It was hoped to simultaneously attract foreign currency and demonstrate to visitors - representing the world - that Spain was not the defeated, backward and inquisitorial country that the black legend and romantic novels propagated, an image that the catastrophic end of the colonial adventure had finished off. While it would take until the end of the 1940s for politics to establish operational management and regulation instruments at national level, the private initiative of cities that already had a certain tourist influx such as San Sebastian, Malaga and Barcelona, as well as those such as Madrid or Zaragoza that wanted to attract foreign tourists, encouraged the creation of a network of entrepreneurial associations that were agile, sharing an innovative business vision, with an eye on the international market. This network expanded steadily from the 1910s onwards until it achieved national coverage.
Initially, they chose different names – “Society for Attracting Foreigners”, “Promotion of Tourism”, “Syndicate of Initiative and Tourism” etc. – but the objective was common: to create a lobby to defend their interests in the face of political regulators, to share knowledge about the industry, to learn about and implement modern tourist products and services, as well as to create links beyond provincial and national borders. Some of them, such as the “Sociedad de Atracción de Forasteros de Barcelona” or the “Sindicato de Iniciativo y Propaganda de Aragón” published periodical journals to publicise the beauties and curiosities of their respective cities and regions. Likewise, international agencies such as Thomas Cook published tourist magazines for the Spanish-speaking market. This communication aims to take the musical pulse of pioneering magazines for promoting tourism such as Gran Vida (1903-1936?), Barcelona Atracción (1911-1954), La Revista de Viajes (1924-1936), Aragón (1925-1968), or Páginas de Turismo Nacional (1945-1946). The first began its journey as an organ of the Sociedad Hípica Española but gradually broadened its horizons to include tourism and the arts, the second was born as a magazine for tourists and the last already shows an institutional character. What kind of music is mentioned in them, how is music advertised and used as a tourist attraction? What was the origin and course of the aesthetic-musical premises we found? These and other questions will guide the presentation.
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