How ‘Carmen’ became a flamenco doll. Andalusian women and Spanish folklore in films featuring tourists (1905–1975)

ABSTRACT

The main aim of this paper is to reveal how the image of Andalusian women was fossilised and re-imagined for tourism during a decisive timeframe (1905–1975), to wit, how Bizet's most well-known heroine became a reified embodiment of Spanish women by turning ‘Carmen’ into a highly domesticated folkloric singer, a symbolic doll. To understand how this process was showcased in cinemas, a sampling of 104 films featuring tourists has been analysed using NVivo software, detecting every mention in their plots of specific categories such as those connected with Andalusian women in folkloric films (Labanyi, J. 2004. Lo andaluz en el cine del franquismo: los estereotipos como estrategia para manejar la contradicción. Sevilla: Centro de Estudios Andaluces. https://www.centrodeestudiosandaluces.es/publicaciones/lo-andaluz-en-el-cine-del-franquismo-los-estereotipos-como-estrategia-para-manejar-la-contradiccion): ‘Spanish Gypsies’ and ‘Flamenco World’.

A first approach to the sampling suggests that the interrelationship between these categories intensified in the 1920s and 1930s, the first period in which cinema was deliberately used as political propaganda by Spanish filmmakers, the aim being to promote tradition in the lead-up to the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition in Seville. The increasing relevance of the category of ‘Andalusian Women’ can also be perceived during early Francoism, which is key evidence for the concept of reification of the female Gypsy dancer for tourism purposes and the transformation of ‘Carmen’ into a living, standardised Spanish souvenir during the developmentalist period.

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© 2021 Maria C. Puche-Ruiz. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

KEYWORDS:

• Myth
• Carmen
• tourism
• Spain
• twentieth century

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/State Research Agency/ERDF, UE under Grant PGC2018-095992-B-I00, Project ‘Territorial intelligence vs. tourism growth. Tourist destination management and expansion of the real estate sector’, and also by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/State Research Agency/ERDF, UE under Grant RTI2018-094100-B-I00, Project ‘Spanish towns in audiovisual fiction film. Documentary record and audiovisual analysis of the territory (FACES-50)’. As far as I know, there are no competing interests to disclose.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation/State Research Agency/ERDF, UE [Grant Number PGC2018-095992-B-I00 and Grant Number RTI2018-094100-B-I00].

Notes on contributors

Maria C. Puche-Ruiz

Maria C. Puche-Ruiz is specialised in conservation of Cultural Heritage and management of local development, and was a tourist planning consultant at the Spanish Tourism Board (Spanish Ministry of Tourism, Tourspain, 2010–2012). She received her PhD in Geography from the University of Seville, where she was a postgraduate researcher from 2014 to 2018. She also was a visiting researcher at the Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne (2015), the University of Leeds (2016), and the University of Birmingham (2017), supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Culture, and has participated in several prestigious national and international conferences.

As a postdoctoral researcher Maria C. Puche is member of the R&D team ‘Territorial and Tourism Studies’ (University of Seville), and the international research network ‘CITur’ (‘Cinema, Collective Imaginary and Tourism’, led by the University of Valencia). Since 2018, she has been a team member of the Project ‘Spanish Towns in Audiovisual Fiction. Documental Record and Territorial Analysis’, conducted by the University Carlos III of Madrid. She has focused her academic research on the relationship between national and territorial identity and cinema, with special stress on the analysis of films that show the tourist experience and tourism policies in Andalusia.