Industrial Heritage In Tourist Areas |
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Carme Gilabert |
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This year, 2009, “Museums and Tourism” was the central theme of the International Museum Day organised by ICOM, in which heritage was presented as a common element in the relationship between tourists and the native inhabitants of a region. It is also thought that the increased awareness of tourists towards heritage encourages sustainable tourism.
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The Castelló d’Empúries Ecomuseum-Flour Mill is located in an area noted for the importance of tourism - the Empordà / Costa Brava region is a tourism brand par excellence. In 2002, the Costa Brava received six million tourists, with a significant and growing internal (Catalan) market, a large number of foreign tourists and a negligible number of tourists from the rest of Spain. The sea and sand tourism model that has been developed in the area and, which produced results for a long time, is being exhausted; it is no longer working on its own and its tourist offering needs to be reoriented in order to adapt to changes in demand. |
Within the Costa Brava brand, Castelló d’Empúries / Empúriabrava is one of the main tourist destinations, the base for tourist activity and the local economy, with a floating population in the summer of 80,000 people. But there is also residential tourism, which is stable for a good part of the year. The historic centre, which existed on the fringes of Empúriabrava’s dynamic tourism has, in recent years, acquired a growing role as a place to visit. The region’s cultural offering is considerable and possesses a wide range of possibilities; however it also has an internationally renowned museum, with significant resources (The Dalí Theatre-Museum) that focuses demand and thus satisfies the cultural needs of the floating population in our area. One of the Ecomuseum’s fundamental aims is to contribute to the improvement of the tourist offering. This type of museum represents a novelty in the region’s tourist offering, which is a point in its favour with a view to new trends in tourist demand. As the only industrial heritage museum in the Alt Empordà area and one of the few in the whole Girona region, the Ecomuseum-Flour Mill represents a point of departure from the province’s entire cultural offering. As an ecomuseum it plays an important role in promoting knowledge of and about the region. The fact that we find ourselves in a tourist area with the above mentioned characteristics means that the rhythm of individual visits is highly influenced by the type of tourism we receive and by the season. The influence of tourist demand means we have to translate publicity and information about museum exhibits into at least three languages, apart from Spanish. The staff who deal with the public have to be able to express themselves in the largest number of languages possible. Summer opening hours must be longer than winter ones. The possibility of offering guided tours in other languages complicates organisational matters. With respect to the future, one of our challenges vis-à-vis the tourist public is to attract visitors from those areas closest to our institution as well as passing tourists. The municipality’s Tourist Competitiveness and Strategic Plan states that the Ecomuseum-Flour Mill could become one of the most visited buildings in the town’s Historic Centre. Castelló d’Empúries is a place of opportunity that could help with the de-seasonalisation of tourism. However new motivations, capable of translating into year-round visits, must be generated.
Castelló d’Empúries Ecomuseum-Flour Mill. Visitors origin, 2008
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