‘Albergues de carretera’ (Highway inns): a key step in the evolution of Spanish tourism and modernist architecture

Abstract

The early historical trajectory of tourism in Spain is distinctive, with two key points of transition in this respect as in others: the loss of the Colonies (1898); and the Civil War (1936–1939) followed by the Franco dictatorship. During the intervening years, some intellectuals understood the benefits of better connections with Europe, displaying a decades-lasting effort to persuade governments to invest in tourism development, and providing them with effective plans. As their vision began to be realised, Spain gained infrastructures for further economic development, and a new income source. The examination of this theme necessarily brings together Tourism History and Architecture, which, at the dawn of Spanish tourism in the early twentieth-century, were so closely related that their interconnections cannot be ignored.1 This article focuses particularly on the relationship between tourism planning and Modernist Architecture,2 through the work of the outstanding ‘1925 Generation’ modernist architects Carlos Arniches and Martín Domínguez and their promotion of new highway hostelries for motorists, the ‘Albergues de carretera’.