The aim of this article is to establish whether fostering rural tourism by reuse and promotion of heritage has been able to mitigate the demographic decline in a depopulating area of Spain. Two types of route-based tourism in the north-west of Castile are compared, namely the millenary pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela and the nineteenth-century Castile Canal. For three decades, public authorities have actively stimulated tourism along these routes in order to retain the population. The findings reveal that public-sector investments and promotion have contributed to the growth of tourism along both routes but have not stopped demographic decline. The lack of revitalisation of the countryside is the result of the preceding rural exodus that has destroyed village communities.

El Desarrollo Local y la cooperación transfronteriza en la Raya de Castilla y León = Local Development and cross-border cooperation in the “Raya” of Castile and León

Durante el apogeo de la soberanía se estudiaban las fronteras desde una perspectiva estado-céntrica. Hoy en día vivimos en una época de post-soberanía en que los estados ya no son contenedores de seguridad, economía y cultura y sus fronteras han perdido la función de barrera militar, económica y cultural. Por lo tanto nuevos enfoques teóricos se han desarrollado sobre las zonas fronterizas. Estos enfoques se basan en la idea de que la integración transnacional genera espacios de interacción económica, política y cultural, creando nuevas identidades transfronterizas. No obstante, los estudios de la frontera basados en estos nuevos enfoques padecen de una cierta euforia transfronteriza, porque hay indicios de que la apertura de la frontera no la deja como un palimpsesto de un pasado soberanista del estado. Por eso hay que matizar la euforia transfronteriza por las siguientes razones: primera, aunque se puede observar un incremento de la interacción económica transfronteriza, ésta sigue estando situada en su mayor parte dentro del estado; segunda, la cohesión político-cultural sigue siendo poco intensa en las zonas transfronterizas; y tercera, la frontera sigue dividiendo culturas e identidades.

Borderlands offer a specific context for the development of tourism. On the one hand the borders witness the historical scars of a divide between neighbouring territories. On the other borders function as an interface. In the area along the border of the Spanish region of Castile and Leon and the Portuguese Centre and North regions potential tourism resources are described in terms of attractions and place-related offer. Subsequently, based on the ways tourists use the potential a typology of tourism activities is developed. The destination-based typology uses Butler’s TALC model, institutional involvement in tourism development and the pros and contras of tourism development in a debordering periphery. The typology reflects a wide range of tourist activities including microproducts using endogenous resources as well as destinations exploited by supra-regional or global actors. Most destinations are typical borderland ones.