La fuerza de un mito: la presencia del paisaje “nacional” en la publicidad turística gallega en España - DOI 10.5216/ag.v1i1.2371

Abstract

The national landscape and the tourism advertising in Galicia (Spain): In the contemporary world the methods used by nationalisms to foster the identification of the image of their peoples through their own landscape finds a peculiar parallel in the marketing practices used by public and private institutions to foster some mass tourism products through easily identifiable traces of the landscapes they want to sell. In both cases difference is underlined through the essentialist vision or caricature of some elements in the landscape. Once again this theory can be proved in the case of Galicia, Spain. There is already a Castilian landscape identity, and so there is as well a Galician landscape identity. Some topographic, climatic, botanical and cultural elements are to shape our landscape and make the difference between it and others. However, since regionalism and nationalism first took a look at the territory in the 19th century, some of these elements have been excessively used. Do we still find such elements in present-day advertising? Is the nationalist imaginary so different from tourist iconography after all? This paper aims at proving the insistence of television advertisers working for the Galician Regional Government, the Xunta de Galicia, on the Galicianess (galeguidade) of the landscape, which is emphasized by the use of a series of elements of great symbolic significance.