Vorlesung mit CURE-Fellow Adelina Stefan
WANN
WO
Universität des Saarandes |
Gebäude B3 1 | Hörsaal 0.14
SPRACHE
ENGLISCH
PROGRAMM
The presentation uses two case studies –the Romanian Black Sea coast and the Spanish Costa
del Solto– examine the development plans of international tourism, but also how these plans
transformed the tourist landscape and shaped people’s lives and identities in these two regions
between 1950s and 1970s. Despite their opposite political regimes and locations in two
different European peripheries both Francoist Spain and socialist Romania decided to develop
international tourism at about the same time – in the early to mid 1950s – and for the same
reason – to acquire hard currencies that were needed for industrial modernization. This
initiative coincided with the rise of mass tourism in Europe and a higher interest for seaside
tourism. In this process beach tourism became a focus of both governments and coastal regions
in both Spain and Romania benefitted from substantial investments.
In her paper Stefan argues that foreign tourists significantly reshaped both coastal areas
despite the different political and economic systems. Besides the building of modern hotels, the
arrival of foreign tourists helped to give rise to a cosmopolitan society where a variety of
languages were spoken, where new fashions were disseminated, and where tourists and locals
developed relations and lifestyles that had previously been unfathomable. These similarities
suggest that we need to refine the existing literature’s portrayal of state-driven socialist system as strictly opposed to the market-driven capitalist development, but also to pay more attention
to the similarities between tourist places located in the authoritarian states of the
Mediterranean region and in socialist South-Eastern Europe.
