Tourism, the expression of curiosity in movement, motivated by the need to break with everyday life and seek out authenticity, be it real or invented, today is a cultural phenomenon of enormous social, economic and environmental repercussions, both for the developed societies which generate the largest part of the existing flows and for the communities that receive the avalanche of tourism. With the traditional sun and beach model exhausted, with serious repercussions for the balance of territories in the context of a globalised world and given the importance of the increase in the flow of tourism over the past few years and the international dimension of promoting peace, understanding and prosperity defined by the United Nations, the debate posed in this monograph focuses on the need to promote a future tourism based on sustainability, a tourism integrated into its surroundings, which takes in identity as a basic resource and which is of a dimension that is in accordance with each territory’s capacity to take in tourists. Given the prior condition of hospitality which this phenomenon involves, a shared time and space and a common objective, the activity of tourism can become, through the promotion of appropriate political strategies, a point of encounter and dialogue, an aspect which, as the authors state, was already emphasised by Montaigne in the 16th century, when he said that “one must travel in order to know the spirit of the countries one visits and their customs and to rub and polish our brains with those of others.”

Lluís Bonet, Director of Postgraduate Courses in Cultural Management, University of Barcelona; José Antonio Donaire, MP for the PSC in the Parliament of Catalonia; Bertram M. Gordon, Lecturer in History, Mills College, California; Bernard Morucci, Emeritus Professor at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University. Director of the UNESCO lectureship “Culture-Tourism-Development”; Yolanda Onghena, Coordinator of the Intercultural Dynamics Programme, CIDOB Foundation; Agustín Santana, Institute of Political and Social Sciences, University of La Laguna; Pepe Serra, Head of Programmes, Caixa Catalunya Foundation; Jordi Juan Tresserras, Coordinator of the Cultural Tourism Programme, University of Barcelona.

ISSN: 1132-6107

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