Nostalgia, solastalgia and heterogeneity in tourist locations: tensions in canarian and mallorcan poetry

Abstract

In tourism studies, nostalgia is often linked to the configuration of an image that, from the evocation of the traveller, motivates the desire and even the gaze of the tourists that will visit a specific place. This paper analyses how nostalgia is also expressed in the cultural practices that emerge in mature tourist destinations. After reflecting on the temporal articulation of nostalgia and its implication in the creation of affective communities, nostalgic evocation procedures are studied in seven collections of poems published in the Balearic and Canary Islands between 2015 and 2021. We study how the so-called in Spain “tourist boom” marks a symbolic border in the physical occupation of space and its transformation. The above is perceived from an idealized point of view and remembered with a feeling of loss. This, however, does not prevent the creation of new cultural forms, which emerge from diverse formulas of hybridization. In the poems, two complementary procedures of nostalgic evocation are detected. The first one refers to the pain for the natural or cultural environment that the tourist industry has destroyed, in whose analysis the adequacy of using the concept of solastalgia is assessed. Secondly, a more innovative procedure analysed refer to the incorporation in the poetic imaginary of references to the experience of the resident in tourist environments. This strategy motivates a reflection on the complex and heterogeneous legacy of cultures affected by touristization processes.