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Southward to the Sun: The Impact of Mass Tourism On the Coast of Spain James J. Parsons" Few phenomena have had greater social, economic, and environmental consequences for post World War II Europe than the emergence of an international mass tourism focused on the warm beaches to the south. As long as vacations were confined largely to the wealthy, the nearer shores of the French and Italian Riviera received most of this summer migration with lesser numbers seeking out the Atlantic side of the Iberian peninsula. The advent of popular tourism, based on low cost charter air travel and aggressive promotion bv the big tour operators, has made places such as Rimini, Corfu, Mallorca, Tenerife, and Torremolinos as well known to the average Britain, German, or Scandinavian as the resorts of the Riviera or Europe's great capital cities. More and more the traditional tourist centers along with the museums, art galleries, cathedrals, and monuments of earlier civilizations have yielded primacy of popularity to the sun and sand of the warmer beaches to the south. Spain more than any other country has been the recipient of this massive influx of sun seekers. Its tourist industry, the largest and most up-to-date in Europe, has come to be the major prop under the 0 Dr. Parsons is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley, 94720. 129 130ASSOCIATION OF PACIFIC COAST GEOGRAPHERS surging Spanish economy.1 Of all the persons crossing foreign frontiers on business or holidays in the world in recent years, some 15 percent are estimated to have entered Spain. In 1971 a record 26 million visitors, an increase of 11 percent from the previous year, left behind $2.2 billion (U.S.) in foreign exchange which accounted for close to one-third of all the country's foreign exchange earnings, both visible and invisible. The upward trend continued in 1972, as total tourist capacity (beds) passed the three million mark.2 For better or for worse, tourism, Spain's principal industry, is having a massive and irreversible impact on both environment and society. Only remittances home from the Spanish workers in other European countries, especially Germany, France, and the Benelux coun1 J. Navlon: Tourism—Spain's Most Important Industry. Geography, Vol. 52, 1967, pp. 23-40. 2 The most recent and comprehensive data on Spanish tourism is to be found in /// Plan de Desarrollo Económico y Social 1972-75: Turismo e Información y Actividades Culturales (Madrid, Ì972), esp. pp. 13-54. For statistics on comparative international tourism see the annual reports of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: International Tourism and Tourism Policy in OECD Member Countries, Paris, 1971 and earlier years. Aside from the technical reports of the Ministerio de Información y Turismo 's Instituto de Estudios Turísticos and its journal, Estudios Turísticos, I have found but two serious analyses of the industry in the Spanish literature. Angel Palomino: El milagro turístico (Barcelona, 1972) is by a well-known hotelier and prize-winning novelist (Torremolinos Gran Hotel) whose insightful and readable account is strongly supportive of the industry and its contribution to the Spanish economy. In sharp contrast is the brief but pungently critical study of Guillermo Luis Diaz-Plaja: El turismo, un faho "boom"? Introducción a la problemática socio-económico del turismo en Balaeres, "Colección Los Suplementos," Madrid, 1972. One of the few contributions specifically related to tourism in the extensive Spanish geographical literature is an early short note by Juan Vila Valenti: EI valor económico del turismo en España, Estudios Geográficos, Vol. 23 (No. 86), May, 1963, p. 293-294. See also V. Sarrion: Benidorm, un nucleo turístico en expansión, Anales Univ. de Murcia, Facultad de Letras, Vol. 23, Murcia. 196465 ; Uwe Riedel: Entwicklung, Struktur und raumliche differenzierung des Fremdenverkehrs der Balearen. Erdkunde, 26:138-152, June, 1972; and, by the same author, Der Fremdenverkehr auf den Kanarischen Inseln—Eine geographische Untersuchung. Schriften der Geogr. Inst. Univ. Kiel, Band 35, 1971. Carl Schott of Marburg has a study of Spanish tourism in press. The most objective source of current information on the industry is to be found...
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