Living the Global Tourism Boom “from Below”: People’s Expectations, Social Experiences, and Narratives of Modernization in Francoist Spain (1950s–70s)

Abstract This article analyzes the social effects of mass global tourism on Spaniards. Since the 1950s, and especially in the 1960s, the Franco regime promoted tourism policies that allowed the massive arrival of foreigners to Spain. At the same time, the regime’s propaganda conveyed that Spaniards, too, were part of this new situation of modern tourism. Scholarship has often treated tourism as an asset for breaking the hold of authoritarianism. Tourism symbolized social and economic modernity, which was seen as incompatible with a dictatorship like Francoism. Yet beyond these broad narratives, the social effects of tourism on Spaniards have rarely been studied on empirical grounds. This article argues that mass global tourism had a strong effect on Spanish society, but not the one described in prevailing modernizing narratives. The regime created high expectations that clashed with poor realities and left people resentful. By the mid-1960s, contrary to official propaganda, almost two-thirds of the Spanish population had no tourism experience at all. For those Spaniards who could travel, both in Spain and abroad, many felt like second-class tourists and perceived that tourism was designed mainly to please wealthy Europeans. Most recognized the economic benefits but separated them from the social consequences, which they often judged negative. Inside Spain, the flood of foreigners provoked scandals over “immorality” and even riots that disturbed public life. Catholic and conservative Spaniards protested against tourism and against the regime itself, accusing it of betraying the values it claimed to defend. Ironically, rather than liberalizing mindsets, tourism often reinforced traditional ones.