From Star Wars to Black Mirror: Tourists are discovering Spain through famous filming location

Sport of Thrones, La Casa de Papel, Elite, Black Mirror, and Almodóvar’s films, the listing of main worldwide productions shot, in whole or partially, in Spain has continued to develop in recent times. 

It has additionally led to the event of cinema and tv tourism within the nation as individuals journey to see the places the place their favorite movies and exhibits had been shot.  

“Earlier than it was extra like individuals who had been superfans of a film, so that they had been travelling principally south of Spain within the desert the place westerns had been filmed or in Seville within the footsteps of Star Wars, however now it’s turning into increasingly standard,” explains Diego Santos, professor of tourism at EAE Enterprise Faculty of Madrid. 

“There was an even bigger pattern up to now years round film tourism. This area of interest is rising very quick.”

The primary research of its type in Spain, Spain of Movie: developments in cinematographic tourism, confirms this pattern. 4 out of ten respondents recognised that tradition is among the nice motivations for travelling. One in ten revealed that they’ve deliberate a getaway to someplace that has been used to movie a film or TV present. 

“The expansion potential of this sort of tourism is big with the rise of huge streaming platforms like Netflix and their skill to arouse in thousands and thousands of viewers the curiosity in landscapes and cultures around the globe,” says Ana Alonso, director and founding father of The Travelling Set, Spain’s first consulting agency specialised in movie tourism.

The research discovered that Madrid was town the place a movie, collection or documentary was most continuously talked about through the go to (28.1 per cent), adopted by Almería (22.6 per cent) and Seville (15.3 per cent). 

“The problem is now to develop knowledgeable supply, put it on the market, and stimulate demand. In comparison with the UK, which is a frontrunner on this sector, there are nonetheless few proposals of this sort in Spain. It is a bit like in the beginning of wine tourism,” Alonso provides.

Movie tourism is a quickly creating area of interest

Rising demand has led to the creation of an trade particularly linked to movie tourism.  Firms are beginning to work with tour operators to draw travellers all for tourism based mostly on cinema and TV collection.

“It is not nearly going to locations or visiting the principle places the place films had been recorded, however extra about linking cinema to town’s historical past,” explains Aubry Minotti, founding father of Lorens, a consulting agency which works by the tour operator channel and journey businesses. “These are extra vacationer experiences the place the movie illustrates, extends, and completes a vacationer discourse and finally redraws the define of a vacationer product by cinema.”

The experiences on supply are numerous and may embrace evening screenings, themed dinners at eating places, stitching workshops, viewing movie costumes or doing a film-themed teambuilding expertise.

“By way of display tourism, you’ll be able to discuss tradition, gastronomy, pure heritage, cinema, or fiction that leads you to a spot for a cause associated to the tales you’ve got seen at house,” says Alonso, who has already developed guides for cinematographic routes by the places chosen by large productions. “The probabilities are big.”

Spain is already a preferred filming location

Spain has at all times been a preferred place for filming, because of its local weather – quick, gentle winters, low rainfall, and greater than 3,000 hours of sunshine per 12 months in some areas – and the range of its landscapes, from the arid desert to the plush forest or the Mediterranean Sea. 

Within the Sixties, Almería got here into the highlight after Italian director Sergio Leone chosen the Tabernas desert because the setting for his well-known Spaghetti Westerns, similar to The Good, the Dangerous, and the Ugly.

“Spain has been utilizing films as a approach of selling tourism for many years,” says Santos. “Nonetheless, at the moment, figuring out that our tourism mannequin appears to not be essentially the most socially sustainable, each single area of interest that helps us to maneuver from areas which can be extremely concentrated with touristification and massification to different spots is admittedly vital.”

Since 2020, the Spanish authorities has additionally been providing tax credit of 30 per cent for the primary million euros spent and 25 per cent for the remainder to draw worldwide movie productions. Public filming permits have been made simpler, and the method for granting visas to worldwide manufacturing crews has been simplified. These productions at the moment are producing an financial affect of €1.32 billion, based on the Spain Movie Fee.

And, as an indication that Spain is rising as a prime vacation spot for this rising pattern, the primary European congress on movie tourism will probably be held subsequent month in the nation.

Might this be an answer to mass tourism?

On the identical time, protests towards mass tourism have been underway in Spain since final 12 months. Locals have complained in regards to the damaging affect on their lives, beginning with a extreme housing disaster accentuated by short-term leases.

Final summer time, vacationers had been even sprayed with water weapons in Barcelona. Might this new kind of tourism present an answer?

“For us, display tourism is a brand new approach of doing issues, extra related to sustainability,” Alonso says. “It is a kind of tourism that is not tied to a selected time of 12 months, like going swimming on the seaside is, and it additionally permits us to redirect visitors to locations you by no means thought you’d go to.”

It’s a imaginative and prescient shared by Lorens, which affords excursions to a number of places throughout Spain. 

“These shoppers need, after all, to see the principle monuments, however as quickly as we take them to a secondary place that the cinema has highlighted, you get wows that come out on a regular basis,” mentioned Minotti.