Models: from Malaga in the Basque Country
Two years and a bit ago, the Popular Party won the elections in the Balearic Islands with a slogan its representatives repeated loud and clear: they wanted to import Málaga's cultural tourism model here. Mayor Jaime Martínez and his deputy, Javier Bonet, in particular, wanted to make Palma a "cultural city," like Málaga, which, of course, is also governed by the PP. I put the quotation marks in, because in reality, more than a cultural city, Málaga functions as a showcase city that attracts tourism with a supposed cultural appeal that ends up being a simple advertising operation, flashy but banal. Málaga, in fact, has specialized in hosting franchise museums, full of big names but devoid of artistic content, and with zero cultural value. A pretext to attract even more selfie and Instagram tourism.
It's true that Martínez, Bonet, and company are managing to create something more or less similar to the one in Málaga: the latest demonstration was the patron saint's festival, with a DJ gala and other musical elements. Whether it's about visual arts or music, the Málaga model always seeks the same thing: artists with conveniently uncommitted discourses and attitudes, swallowed quickly and as accommodating as a bao bun. What it's really about is attracting large numbers of people with any excuse that allows them to have fun and, in addition, to claim they've done something "cultural." And, above all, to consume, which is what it's all about. The Malaga model was already described and criticized in the ARA Baleares some time ago by Cristina Ros: dismantled the supposedly cultural nature of a simple tourist marketing operation and contrasted the Bilbao model, a city that has opted for a single museum, the Guggenheim (or two, if we count the Museum of Fine Arts), with an artistic, museum and cultural discourse that is coherent and solid, and which at the same time.
In the ARA Baleares you can also read a very interesting interview by David Marquès in Joaquim Coello, a prominent Barcelona engineer who has lived in Ciutadella for forty years, and who this year gave the inaugural lecture of the city's Artistic Circle's academic year. Coello is a firm believer in seriously limiting the arrival of tourists to the island, so as not to drown it in saturation. He also invokes the Basque model, not only in culture but also in tourism. Indeed, in the Basque Country, tourism remains successful but not overcrowded. It coexists with other economic activities that are part of the productive fabric and has a good relationship with the country's cultural world, from major venues like the Guggenheim and the San Sebastián Film Festival to Basque music, traditional popular culture, and literature. The Basque tourism model is based on the idea of responsibility at all levels: the individual responsibility of the tourist, the corporate responsibility of companies, and the institutional responsibility of the public administration: all must ensure the care and respect for the territory, the environment, and the culture of the country. To this end, they have developed a concept, tourism intelligence, which involves the deployment of a Tourism Intelligence System (TIS), which functions as a repository of useful, relevant, and organized information, in order to promote good practices in the tourism sector.
We must remember that the Basque government is not precisely in the hands of revolutionary Bolivarians, but rather of the Jesuit right-wing of the PNV. But perhaps there is still a right capable of considering ideas of productivity beyond easy money and blink-and-you-miss-it announcements.
