Congratulations to Dr. Anna Casas Aguilar, Assistant Professor of Spanish, for receiving a SSHRC Insight Grant to assist with her research project titled “Images of Difference: Regionalisms, Gender, and the Evolution of Tourism in Spain (1960-2020)”.
About the research project:
Tourism offers unique insights into dynamics of identity creation. This research contributes to a greater understanding of the evolution and impact of tourism in Spain and in the development of regional differences in the country from the 1960s to the present. Specifically, it seeks to uncover how the tourist industry in Spain and its representations in cultural products have had an impact on the creation of gender, national and regional identities in this country.
Focusing on Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands, three of the country’s 17 “autonomous communities” (similar to a Canadian province or a US state), the project will compare how three coastal and bilingual parts of the country have navigated the growing place of tourism in their societies and cultures. All three are areas in the Mediterranean coast and Catalan/Valencian-Spanish bilingual, yet all three have followed different paths over the past 60 years in terms of their relationship between regional and Spanish identities. With this research, I aim to illustrate how collective identities resulted not only from oft-cited factors such as language, history and regional governments, but also from cross-cultural contact with European travellers.
Through the study of materials produced in Spain that present the coast, tourists, as well as Spaniards themselves, I will examine the ways in which the regional diversity of Spain has been a dominant theme in the discussion, criticism and promotion of tourism. I will study the extent to which agents beyond the state (e.g., regional governments, but also writers and visual artists), have influenced the creation of the tourist “image” and ideas of foreignness and belonging in Spain from the 1960s until today and the role of gender in this creation.
