In the last quarter of the century the number of scientific publications and published works that address the history of modern tourism in different countries has increased. However, research on the tourism phenomenon in contemporary post-war periods is still scarce. Hence, when in September 2018 the University of Barcelona invited us to coordinate a session on the International Aftermaths of War Congress, scheduled for June 5, 6 and 7, 2019, we did not hesitate. We proposed that it be titled Postguerra y turismo en la Europa contemporánea and that its objective would be to analyse the evolution of tourism in the post-war stages of the twentieth century, especially those derived from the First and Second World Wars and the Spanish civil conflict (1936–1939), studying the work that, in an exceptional and challenging backdrop, social entities and organisations undertook in the interest of developing the leisure travel industry, as well as its contribution to the emotional and economic recovery of the old continent.
The response among expert university researchers on the history of tourism was very inspiring. Around twenty of them, of Italian, Swiss, French and Spanish nationalities, were interested in participating in our session and exhibiting their work there. But, as the rules of the Organising Committee recommended a maximum number of participants per session, we were forced to make a choice among the applicants—not an easy task. However, after analysing the proposals presented, and thinking about a possible future publication, we chose the works that make up the book that is in your hands today. We believe that all of them, defended and discussed in Barcelona, and improved in the last few months thanks to the recommendations received at the Congress and from the evaluators in Palgrave, will contribute to shed light on the subject of our study, and in a special way on what happened in Italy and Spain.
In Chap. 2, Mari Carmen Rodríguez (Universität Freiburg, Switzerland) points out that in France the battlefields of the Great War were seen as a new tourist market from 1915 onwards. As of 1919, this product was exploited and inspired other European countries that were impacted by the conflict, generated benefits for the devastated areas and interested large travel agencies, like the British company, Thomas Cook. Next, and in light of this tourism model, Rodríguez focuses her attention on Franco’s Spain, studying the development of war tourism during the civil war (1936–1939) with the creation of the so-called Rutas de Guerra, and in the immediate post-war period as the end of the armed confrontation did not mean the disappearance of these routes. Their name changed to Rutas Nacionales, but they continued offering trips to visit different geographical places in Spain and to visit new symbols of the Franco regime, such as the Alcázar in Toledo.
Staying with battlefield tourism, Ester Capuzzo (Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Italy) in Chap. 3 analyses what happened in the period between the two world wars in Italy. Funeral monuments to fallen soldiers and excursions to places that the war had turned into sites of public and private memory, even some that went back to the Italian Risorgimento, attracted more and more tourists. She also looks at organisers, such as the Touring Club Italiano
and the Ente Nazionale per la Industria Turistiche, which fascist organisations like l’Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro and l’Opera Nazione Combattenti joined. In addition, the Mussolini regime would use this tourist product not only as an important source of economic income, but also as an internal propaganda instrument to increase the number of fascism followers.
In Chap. 4, Ivanne Galant (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3, France) studies the way in which Spanish and French guides, brochures and travel accounts continued to promote travel to Spain during the civil war and the first Franco regime. After highlighting the role of this literature in the construction of a national historical account written inside and outside, she points out that in this genre, in addition to proposing lists of monuments to visit and itineraries to follow, some pages dedicated to the history of the location visited would be included. The guide also had a great responsibility since its limited lines could represent the only source of historical-political knowledge read by tourists. Next, she analyses the editorial panorama of the publications related to travel in France and Spain, and the range of positions proposed for this historical discourse, as well as the strategies used to continue presenting the country as an attractive tourist destination.
In Chap. 5, Marta Luque Aranda (Universidad de Málaga, Spain) and Carmelo Pellejero Martínez (Universidad de Málaga, University Institute of Tourist Investigation, Intelligence and Innovation, Spain) discuss the work carried out by the Dirección General de Turismo
in Spain in the 1940s, pointing out that in a political and very unfavourable economic context, both domestically and internationally, its work was highly influenced by the interventionism and the scarcity of resources that characterised the first Franco regime. Its work focused primarily on three objectives: (a) to both rebuild, after the civil war, and increase the Red de Establecimientos Turísticos del Estado, which had been born in 1928 and was intended to complement private initiative; (b) to improve and expand the limited knowledge of Spain abroad, publishing posters and publications, inviting agents from the sector to visit the nation and opening tourist information offices nationally and abroad; and (c) to participate in the organisation of trips and excursions, first with the Rutas Nacionales, successors of the Rutas de Guerra started in 1938, and as of 1949 with the public company Autotransporte Turístico Español, formed with the mission of creating a national and regional network of tourist routes, as well as offering a car and bus rental service.
Based on their study of the political and social context, and an analysis of the advertising and propaganda strategy promoted by the Franco Administration, Beatriz Correyero (Universidad Católica San Antonio, Murcia, Spain) and Saida Palou (Universidad de Gerona, Catalan Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, Spain) examine in Chap. 6 the Spanish tourism context that was forged between 1939 and 1959, as well as the political, institutional and administrative framework that sustained it, concluding that after the civil war, tourism became a tool at the service of the regime propaganda. This was done not only to legitimise it, but also to strengthen national sentiment by promoting stereotypes with which some regions, such as Catalonia, would not feel identified. Through the review of specialised magazines, posters, tourist propaganda brochures and official documents published by the analysed institutions, it is revealed that after the civil war, the touristic promotion of one of the most important tourist destinations in Spain, namely Barcelona, focused on documentaries prepared specifically for visiting tourists, ignoring their full reality and nullifying any dissent with the State framework.
In Chap. 7, Patrizia Battilani (Universitá di Bologna, Centre for Advanced Studies in Tourism, Italy) and Donatella Strangio (Sapienza Universitá di Roma, Italy) start with the assumption that tourism is an economic activity that can be promoted in rural or deindustrialised areas and this can be used as a tool to overcome territorial divisions and the “periphery” of some areas. They point out that Italy is an example for analysing territorial cohesion based on the development of tourism and note that in the province of Trentino, as well as along the northern Adriatic coast, tourism was an engine for development and, consequently, contributed to territorial cohesion. However, it is not clear whether the sector performed the same role in southern Italy. Although public policies focused on manufacturing, the authors show, using new evidence found in the Bank of Italy Archives, that during the decade of the 1950s the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno
(the Agency for the development of the southern regions) also financed investments in the tourism sector.
Finally, Annunziata Berrino (Universitá degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy) and Gaetano Cerchiello (Instituto Universitario de Investigación Turística, Universidad de Alicante, Spain) analyse in Chap. 8 the trajectory of transatlantic passenger-shipping companies during the fifteen years following the Second World War, and especially the impacts and repercussions that this cruise activity had in Spain. In order to do this they reconstructed a volume of cruise traffic during the period under study, taking Barcelona as a reference port and using the port chronicles that were published daily in La Vanguardia Española, as well as using advertising material collected from different virtual newspaper libraries. Their study highlights the clear dominance of the British cruise product, whose expeditions were characterised by their massive nature and high occupancy rates on board, and the obvious autonomy of the cruise business with respect to the general trend of international tourism. Their analysis shows that, while the latter recorded a steady and unstoppable increase, cruises, which are very dependent on emigration traffic, experienced a very different evolution. It should be remembered that, until the early 1960s, no actual tourist shipping lines or cruise companies existed, only transport companies whose main activity was liner services.