Magaluf Ghost Town: Alienation, realism, and magic through film in tourism hotspots

The daily experiences of local populations in tourism hotspots are increasingly characterized by feelings of alienation, resulting in polarized and sometimes ambiguous attitudes toward the tourism industry within these communities. In that context, this article explores, using an ecocritical and new materialist lens, how Magaluf Ghost Town (Miguel Ángel Blanca, 2020) creates an alternative affective image of the Spanish town of Magaluf. Blanca’s film, a hybrid of fiction and non-fiction, follows the lives of real individuals residing in this resort and offers an ironic critique of some consequences of mass tourism and gentrification. Through close reading and audiovisual analysis of selected sequences, the study concludes that this innovative and daring portrayal of Magaluf can reaffirm the local identity through its detailed depiction of various characters that depend on tourism. At the same time, the prestige associated with a more authorial rather than commercial perspective entails the possibility of shaping new mystifications that the tourism industry could incorporate to support a rebranding of Magaluf. The findings point to new grounds in the fertile intersection between film studies and tourism studies when approached from ecocritical perspectives.