This article investigates the role of local stakeholders in the development and implementation of the place branding strategy of the northern Catalan region Empordà. Stakeholder-oriented and participatory approaches towards both place branding and spatial planning provide the theoretical background. The research involved an initial SWOT Analysis, fifteen thematic focus groups and nineteen semi-structured interviews with local stakeholders, as well as a paper-based and on-line questionnaire that opened the process of the brand's conceptualization to all residents. The article discusses the development of the brand, the revision of the storytelling for the territory and the proposal for the logo and slogan ‘Empordà, tocat pels déus’ [Empordà, Touched by the Gods]. On the one hand, the case study demonstrates the value of participatory place branding processes showing that local communities become brand advocates when they are involved throughout the development of a place brand. On the other hand, it highlights the challenges to participatory planning and governance within place brand management, especially when strategic thinking turns into a short-term public-policy approach. The article argues for a more participatory governance of the place brand and reinforces that stakeholder engagement is essential in establishing stronger links between place branding and spatial planning.

The main objective of this article is to analyse the sport place branding strategy of Qatar, a Persian Gulf country that is using the income from the commercialisation of its gas to create an economy, which can be successful in the future without depending on this natural source. Sport, above all football, has been a key sector in which the Qatari government believes in order to promote the image of its country worldwide. One of the most interesting examples used in this article is the relationship between the Qatar Foundation and FC Barcelona. Using a qualitative methodology, this article aims to understand the key pillars of this strategy and why sport mega-events have been so important when governments want to increase their reputation in the international sphere.

Place branding is a relatively new transdisciplinary academic discipline. It is an evolution of what some researchers understood as “place or city marketing,” “place selling,” and “place promotion.” The three concepts analyze the need that territories have to position themselves in order to compete in the global markets through an eminently economic perspective. However, place branding rejects the corporate world to address, as positioning axes, the tangible and intangible values of a specific region and, therefore, its identity. Furthermore, public administrations have had to adopt strategies that link residents when designing place brands that can guarantee long-term narratives and become effective mechanisms for spatial planning, urban governance, local development, or economic promotion. Citizens’ engagement, at the grassroots level, has become a key element for the successful conceptualization and implementation of place brands. The current discipline of place branding is therefore totally linked to the political order. Public administrations become key actors in the development of place branding campaigns, not only in the local context but also at the national and international levels. The aim of this article is to present a theoretical evolution of place branding in order to find the most common links with the political order, as well as to design a conceptual framework to fit this discipline into the context of political science. This theoretical evolution will be conceived taking into account the results of previous empirical research that the authors conducted for different Catalan public administrations. The results of this article show clear synergies between four basic concepts: the place brand, its aim to contribute to sustainable planning, its influence on public governance decisions and, finally, its capacity to be central in the definition of public diplomacy programs outside the usual state-centric domain. Therefore, place branding led by public administrations—this is what we can understand as “public branding”—has a major and inevitable political focus.

In 2014, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid presented a project for the remodelling of their stadia. The new stadia of both clubs will be, not only a place to attend live sports events, but also somewhere fans will be able to consume both football brands permanently, every moment of the day. Currently, stadia have become commodities themselves. At a time when TV rights in Spain were thrown into crisis, sports organizations understand that sports venues allow them to create other significant income sources that could help them to increase their season’s turnover. Hospitality and events packages, for example, are part of this leisure product that professional football clubs offer in their venues. The aim of this article is to analyse how Spanish professional football clubs attempt to maximize the use of their stadiums, and how these venues are also part of a wider city branding strategy for the host cities. Data for this qualitative research are taken from the Spanish football clubs that have UEFA Category 4 stadia: FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atlético de Madrid, Atletic Club de Bilbao, Málaga CF, Real Sociedad, RCD Espanyol and València CF.

This manuscript investigates the use of social media, specifically Twitter, during the forest fires in Artenara and Valleseco, Canary Islands, Spain, during summer 2019. The used methodology was big-data analysis through the Union Metrics and Twlets tools, as well as content analysis of posts related to the fires written by seven relevant accounts on the days when the fires were active, which was between 17 August and 26 September, when 9636.40 hectares were burned. The accounts selected for analysis were the following: Ángel Víctor Torres, autonomous president; Canary Islands Government; Civil Protection of Las Palmas; Military Emergency Unit of the Spanish Army; Delegation of the Spanish Government in the Canary Islands; Citizen’s Service of the Canary Islands Government; and the information account of the Security and Emergency area of the Canary Islands Government. The study concludes that the Canary Islands authorities did not use social media as a preventive element, but almost exclusively as a live-information channel. Future recommendations are presented for the management of social media during natural disasters.

The aim of this article was to analyse the initiative FC Barcelona Peace Tour 2013, in Israel and Palestine. This research is based on lengthy interviews with people associated with the initiative and the use of primary sources, both institutional and journalistic. Secondary sources have also been used, such as journalistic accounts of the initiative. The article thus examines the nature of FC Barcelona Peace Tour 2013, which it defines as an exercise in sports diplomacy, inspired by civil society and articulated through the club. The article concludes that FC Barcelona has been able to act as a mediator between two opposed communities due to the universal values linked to its brand and its nature as a ‘civil religion’. This notwithstanding, the political problems that arose during the planning of the initiative highlight the geopolitical complexity of the Middle East and, by extension, the limits of sports diplomacy.