1930s Sunny Coast the Spanish Market: A blast from the past

摘要

This empirical study is based on the author’s PhD thesis. It aims at rescuing from the Sands of Time the spirit of the destination under analysis, basing itself on the data collected from 1930s newspapers, besides contemporary approaches to that decade in the fields of Political History, War, Tourism, and Leisure. In 1910 the Figueiredos were led to Estoris due to the microclimate, and by 1914 the entrepreneur invested on a local project meant to erect Portugal’s 1st international resort built from scratch. The plan was accomplished even after the Republican regime made way for the military and civilian dictatorships, for as Hall defends authoritarian regimes do not repel tourists. Estoril was then propelled by the Gambling Law and, as Gibbons wrote in 1936, it soon attracted the mighty and the fallen, mainly of British and Spanish origins. This recollection begins with a summary of the delicate Iberian context between 1910 and 1939, and then refers the Sunny Coast as the unofficial stage of the Spanish Civil War, for since 1931 characters like General Sanjurjo settled as refugees. These visitors were pampered thanks to a Vice-Consulate (Cascais), a hotel managed by Galician partners (Monte Estoril), a multitude of leisure delights (Estoril), and Parede’s Radio Club. The Sunny Coast’s support to Franco soon led to rumours that drove tourists away, hence the reference to the strategies applied to overcome them. One shall finish by mentioning the current reality of equipments and the weak historic memory, whose proper recovery might allow to create a new cultural offer linked to the contemporary ‘Cascais’ destination for this neighbouring niche market.