The value of water: the origins and expansion of thermal tourism in Spain, 1750–2010

Abstract

After a long tradition that begins in pre-Roman times and after the assimilation of a Roman and Muslim thermal culture, the Spanish spas re-emerged strongly in the eighteenth century. This was due in part to advances in analytical chemistry and therapeutic medicine during the Enlightenment. However, a number of obstacles (including political instability, lack of adequate infrastructure, poorly defined property rights over mineral resources and the lack of regulation) prevented the successful development of the Spanish thermal tourism in the first two thirds of the nineteenth century. Once these difficulties were overcome in the last quarter of the century, the Spanish spas knew a golden age that was manifested in the quantity and quality of facilities built or renovated and, above all, the increasing number of thermal tourists. However, after World War I, the industry entered a deep recession (caused by seaside tourism competition, the discovery of new therapies, the destruction of assets during the 1936–1939 civil war and the fall in real incomes during the post-war period), which it was only able to overcome at the end of the twentieth century, after the construction of a new thermal paradigm based on health and wellness tourism.