Sustainable destinations: semantic and semiotic representations in translations

Purpose This study investigates how Spain is projected as a sustainable tourism destination in Turespaña's official multilingual promotional materials. Through a thematic triangulation framework (Nature and Climate, Culture and Traditions, Responsible Tourism and Local Experiences), it seeks to diagnose the linguistic and non-linguistic attributions shaping this projected image by compiling a multilingual corpus. Design/methodology/approach The qualitative data analysis (QDA) is LLM-assisted and examines linguistic (adjectival and noun attribution) and non-linguistic (images and colours) data within the corpus. Findings The analysis reveals that Spain's attributes are most often related to its natural elements, antiquity and historical periods, while urban concepts stand out as the dominant spatial references. The image of Spain that is projected varies linguistically: promotional materials in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Russian emphasise historical and urban dimensions; those in English and German focus on culture and nature; while those in French highlight the rural sphere. Visually, Turespaña unifies this narrative through open, natural, and cultural spaces using iconic and chromatic elements without clear sustainable attributions. Research limitations/implications The limitations of this study include the fact that it does not examine other language versions and omits other linguistic and non-linguistic considerations (e.g. verbs, syntax, image position and iconotexts). Practical implications The study advances knowledge by introducing an interdisciplinary approach to provide empirical evidence for the multilingual QDA of Spain's projected image as a sustainable tourism destination. Social implications The study promotes social understanding by applying an interdisciplinary approach to explore how Spain’s projected image as a sustainable tourism destination is interpreted across multilingual contexts. Originality/value The findings reveal that Turespaña's projected image of sustainability does not emphasise sustainable consumption or behaviour, but rather alternative destinations in natural or cultural urban spaces.