Mass Tourism and New Representations of Gender in Late Francoist Spain: The Sueca and Don Juan in the 1960s

This article charts the gendering of mass tourism in Spain under Franco in the 1960s as a locus of intercultural encounters and innovation in forms of popular sociability and gender dynamics. By highlighting the centrality of gender it suggests that exploring the tourism that emerged in this period maps the reinvention of gender representations involving the alignment of tourist otherness and gendered cultural differences that reinscribe the Franco regime's models of femininity. The meaning of the new gender representations that emerged in tourist sites – the iconic Sueca (Nordic female tourist) and a reinvented Don Juan – is also explored from the frame of reference of privileged ‘contact zones’. This study argues for the need to examine the relationship between tourist discourse and practices on the meaning of femininity and masculinity and aims to disclose how the connections between new and old gender representations give insight into the complex contestation of the established Francoist gender order before the end of the Franco dictatorship.