The coronavirus crisis could utterly destroy Spain’s tourism miracle
The biggest tourist success story of modern times has been Spain. When my elder brother — coincidentally, but happily in the circumstances, called Carlos — used to go to Malaga in the 1960s, it was just a fishing village where the ass and cart was the local means of transport. Prices were low and life was simple.
Spain was formally classified, according to the European historian Tony Judt, as “backward”. Many British people also boycotted it because (a) it was headed by Franco until 1975 and (b) they objected to the cruel tradition of the bullfight. Actually, I’m with those cranky old animal lovers here: I think the corrida is absolutely horrible, and I don’t care if Ernest Hemingway was a fan. When I attended a bullfight in Spain, I earnestly hoped the bull would defeat the matador, and if this exhibitionistic display of machismo ended with the guy being gored, then bravo to the bull!
The nicest thing about Argentina was that as soon as it won independence from Spain, it banned the corrida. And one of the best things about football is that as soccer’s popularity rose in Spain, the bullfight’s popularity declined. And then the astonishing success of Spain’s tourism industry was also a major factor in changing the country.
Tourism as a mass industry began in the late 1950s: in 1959, Spain had three million visitors, which was already considered remarkable. By 1973, this had risen to a fantastic 34 million. By 2018, this number had more than doubled to an all-time high of over 82 million. More than 18 million British people visited Spain, plus 11 million French and 11 million Germans — and over two million Irish, which is getting on for half the population. Spain had become the second-most visited country in the world. The country, said Michael Portillo in a recent TV documentary on great railway journeys of Europe, is going through a “golden age” right now.
Alas, that has been paused. Spain’s extraordinary ability to attract tourists has been catastrophically hit by the pandemic, as it leads the ‘red list’ of countries inadvisable to visit.
Others have been hit as well, but Spain’s dependence on the tourism industry is colossal. Is it goodbye Costa Brava, Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol for the foreseeable future? It seems so.
But what made Spain such a phenomenal tourist success? At the beginning, it was because it was so underdeveloped and unspoilt.
Pandemic panic: Spain’s busy beaches could become a thing of the past
I stayed in Sitges near Barcelona as a teenager in the 1960s and sat on a semi-deserted beach desultorily trying to amuse the children I was minding at the time. I thought the place might be nice if it had more people.
Soon enough, these glorious beaches would be thick with people: Spain would mean raves in Ibiza, while Benidorm became a byword for budget holidays, and Marbella, down by Malaga, was high chic.
Spain had tapas bars — a great invention where you could snack continuously on delicious little mouthfuls — and fabulous latenight eating, as the populace prepared to start the night at 10pm. It had street life and the flamenco and it was the source of one of the most refreshing habits of humankind, the siesta, which might be used for actual rest or for a session of canoodling.
Spain had vivacious, extrovert people who, as tourism grew, could speak more English, but the Spanish language itself seemed sufficiently accessible for most visitors to get by — hola and por favor and adios and a few more like that went a long way (along with English, Spanish is the most widely spoken global language, perhaps because it is accessible. And there is the little matter of the Spanish Empire). But behind the cheap holidays of sun, sand, sea, sangria and the
sound of the castanets, Spain also had a deep cultural hinterland which we understood.
The Irish links with Spain go back to the Armada (and probably before), to Galway’s trading links with the Iberian Peninsula and the Irish College at Salamanca, a beacon in Penal times.
In the 20th century, Spain had a continuous demand for Irish governesses, their stories beautifully chronicled by Kate O’brien — a noted Hispanophile — and Maura Laverty, who added delicious Spanish food to the text.
Spain is, after Jerusalem and Rome, a prime place of pilgrimage — last year, the Camino de Santiago attracted over 300,000 pilgrims, from 200 countries (in the 1980s, only a couple of hundred walked it). Avila, linked with St Teresa of that name, was a huge attraction — author Vita Sackville-west was a devotee. As was Montserrat, where St Ignatius Loyola lay down his sword before the image of the Blessed Virgin in 1522 and founded the Jesuit order. The stunning Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona is the most visited monument in Spain, though George Orwell thought it so hideous he wished the anarchists had destroyed it.
I had the Prado museum and Madrid’s other fabled galleries on my bucket list to visit any day now. Will it be any year now? Hopefully.
Spain is a great country of huge contrasts, dramatic extremes and glittering culture, and it would be tragic for its people if the current crisis devastated its tourism.
❝ Irish links with Spain go back to the Armada and probably before it