Delanceyplace.com 01/10/06-A Novel Vacation

In today's excerpt, a novel vacation:

"People looking for a highly unusual vacation on the
eve of the second European conflagration might have
been attracted to the following advertisement placed
in tourist offices throughout major cities in Europe:

"National Spain Invites you to visit the War Route
of
the North (San Sebastian, Bilbao, Santander, Gijon,
Oviedo, and the Iron Ring). See history in the making
among Spanish scenery of unsurpassed beauty.

"So began a tourist brochure created in April 1938 by
the Spanish Nationalists' newly formed National
Spanish State Tourist Department. The Nationalists
beckoned European tourists to visit the 'War Route
of the North' while the Spanish Civil War was still in
progress. Along with its messages targeting markedly
different groups of people--those who wanted the
authenticity of the battlefield experience and those
who just wanted a relaxing, scenic vacation--the
brochure called on tourists to 'Form your own
judgment of the real situation in National Spain
today.'

"The Spanish Nationalists began running
organized tours of the recently secured northern
front on July 1, 1938. They added a War Route of
the South through Andalusia in December of that
same year. Collectively known as the Rutas
Nacionales de Guerra (National War Routes), these
tours began every other day, between July 1 and
October 1 in the north and between December and
April in the south, until the end of World War II. For
£8 or its equivalent in other European currencies, the
Nationalists offered nine-day bus tours, which
included three meals a day, accommodations in
first-class hotels, incidental expenses, and tips.
Spain
was still in the midst of war, yet the tours attracted
thousands of people from throughout Western
Europe.

Although battlefield tourism had been around
since at least the Battle of Waterloo, organized visits
to battle sites increased dramatically after World War
I, when the unfathomable death toll compelled many
people to travel to places such as Verdun or the
Somme as pilgrims wishing to hallow the dead or as
thrill-seekers desiring a vicarious experience of
trench warfare. But the Nationalists' Rutas
Nacionales de Guerra were different from these forms
of battlefield tourism. This was the first time that a
regime whose claim to legitimacy remained very much
in question had sponsored and conducted tours
before the completion of a civil war. The tours also
inaugurated a novel combination of solemn battlefield
tourism with a more traditional brand of recreational
tourism, juxtaposing the great deeds of Nationalist
soldiers alongside 'attractive seaside
resorts.' ...

"Tourism could bring much-needed cash to the
regime's war economy. More important, the very idea
that the Nationalists could conduct tours during
wartime gave them a legitimacy that they wanted
and needed from the international community."

Sandie Holguin, "National Spain Invites You," The
American Historical Review, December 2005, pp.
1399-1400.