THE TOURISTIC PARADOX: TOURISM AND INEQUALITY IN SPAIN

Keywords: Tourism, inequality, spatial analysis, Spain.
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 30

Abstract

Capitalism structurally produces and reproduces inequality. The last two crises, the 2008 financial burst and the coronacrisis, have prompted a further extension of inequality (Piketty, 2020; Tooze, 2021). Touristification, understood as the tourism way of accumulation of capital, has played a key role in the reproduction of capital particularly after the 2008 crisis. Fletcher (2011) stated that global tourism became one spatial fix to the financial crisis. Despite the fact that tourism has been long understood as an expression of capital (Britton,1991), radical analysis on the tourist logics of capital are still pretty marginal. In this regard, very little attention has been payed to the relationship between inequality and tourism development. Moreover, an important body of the literature keeps on defending the expansion of tourism, particularly in peripheral regions, as a mechanism to end poverty and spread prosperity and equality. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence of that assumption.
Spain is characterized for its particular role in the international division of labour in terms of touristification. The tourist production of space has been expanding since the sixties and after the 2008 crisis touristification has increased dramatically (Murray, 2015). This study attempts to focus on the nexus tourism-inequality bridging the method of spatial analysis with the theoretical body of critical geography and political economy. The research analyses all the Spanish municipalities using multiple social and economic variables. The results show that income inequality in the most important tourist destinations, tend to be higher than in the less tourist municipalities.