Criticisms of tourism in Franco’s days

The eyes of Manuel Fraga and his censors were all-seeing, but not even they could stifle absolutely everything, while parameters as to what they were prepared to tolerate did tend to vary according to the subject matter. Tourism was the great motor of economic reconstruction, but there was room for debate so long as this wasn’t an attack on the regime. Fraga did actually enable a certain liberalism, the purpose of which was to demonstrate that there could indeed be tolerance of critical attitudes - all part of improving the international image. This said, this tolerance did tend to depend upon who was making the criticisms. Certain writers were perhaps looked upon more favourably than others.

Llorenç Villalonga was one of Mallorca’s most important authors of the twentieth century. Acclaimed for his 1931 novel ‘Mort de Dama’ that satirised the island’s nobility, he was to join the Falange. He was to revise his views and to, for example, insist that he wrote in Catalan. Nevertheless, it might be said that he did retain some support in regime circles. He came to reject the advance of a consumer society and to lament the dynamics of tourism, by which a worker in the fields could go to work in a hotel where he could earn as much in a fortnight as he had previously done in a year (which was maybe a slight exaggeration).

His was an impossible romanticism, one that the regime would have recognised. As such, it posed no threat, for there was no shortage of these workers. But Villalonga did touch a nerve. Not everyone viewed tourism positively, and he was to express his negative views far more strongly in what was an extraordinary novel published in 1974.

‘Andrea Victrix’ was unlike anything else he had written. It was a sci-fi work in which the narrator had been frozen in 1965 only to be revived in the Mallorca of 2050, a Mallorca that was no longer called Mallorca. It had become Turclub (Tourist Club), the island having been given over to tourism and large corporations. The novel has nods in the direction of Huxley and Orwell, as he presents his dystopian vision replete with androgynous beings whose sole mission is to make visitors happy. An observation from the book is: “the genesis of a type of moral imbecility of our time - tourism”.

There were other authors who took issue with tourism as there were journalists. A 1971 editorial was to read: “Comments, letters to the press, opinions of experts and laymen attest to a conviction that we are progressively destroying Mallorca.” Another article, this one from 1967, began by saying that the tourism revolution was, in spiritual terms, negative. There was a need for there to be a balance or otherwise the new society being created would respond only to materialistic motives. Economists were having their say. Josep Alfonso Villanueva was to become a member of the Balearic parliament with PSOE when democratic government was created in 1983. In 1969, he conducted a socioeconomic analysis of the hotel and hospitality industries, concluding that there should be a limit to the number of tourists.

But perhaps the most full-on attack came in August 1969 in a Barcelona-based magazine called ‘Destino’. Under the headline ‘The Invaded Island’, journalist Eliseo Bayo examined aspects of the problems that the enormous influx of foreign tourists was creating in Mallorca, “our incomparable island, whose placid and far-away tranquillity has been replaced by a fast-paced life, promoting both riches and vicissitudes”. Bayo could find nothing worthy of praise, attacking how little was spent (because Mallorca was so cheap then) and the corruption that had led to the destruction of the coasts. In Calvia, there were up to forty coastal developments. “They have been built anarchically, some without permission. Buildings are put up without urban planning.”

What might Llorenç Villalonga have proposed instead for Mallorca’s economic development? Perhaps nothing. His idealism sprang from a sense of being overwhelmed by the rapidity of change. Less idealistic were voices like Villanueva. Greater control had been needed to prevent Bayo’s anarchy. But it’s all way in the past now, except that it isn’t completely. The invaded island of 1969 had seen nothing like the invasion that was to come and which today gives rise to uncensored criticism and to demands for the very control that had been absent.