El Fenomeno Turistico Y El Viaje Urbano En La Narrativa Y Cine Espanoles De Los Anos Sesenta Y Setenta

Resumen del Libro

With the advent of mass tourism in the first half of the XIX century, travel comes to signify not so much a journey of discovery but a journey of re-discovery and confirmation of the travelers pre-existing knowledge of their destination. The acquisition of such knowledge was made possible by a system of cultural signs and referents initially created by independent travelers in travel narratives, and later appropriated by the tourist industry in travel-related propaganda, a system that now defines our highly visual and mobile society. The purpose of this dissertation is threefold. First, by concentrating on the advent of the phenomenon of tourism in Spain and its subsequent propagation by the Franco regime, I trace the development of the figure of the traveler into that of the tourist, and argue that the compression, visualization, and practice of contemporary physical space imposes the touristic paradigm onto society as a whole. Second, I show that the act of travel itself is conditioned by this time-space compression. I argue that all contemporary travel has come to resemble the cultural practice of tourism as an organized and rapid movement in space during which images and services are consumed. Third, by analyzing different ways of traveling, contemplating, and practicing space in literary texts and in Spanish genre films, I elaborate on the notion of relato de viaje that characterizes tourism, and define it as a discursive practice of physical space. I formulate this definition of travel stories through a reading of the tourist site as it was first discussed in relation to the modernist figure of the flaneur. I conclude that the contemporary tourist-traveler also intends to create his/her own poetic version of the place. I show that this version, however, has little to do with real experience, and, instead, is based on preconceived notions and ideas of the place and, sometimes,—on very crude cultural stereotypes that the individual would oppose in…