The slippery territory of branding a country: Spain. Part 3

By Gonzalo López Marti – Creative director, etc / LMMiami.com

• Spain is undergoing a national frenzy of “turismofobia”.
• That’d be “tourism phobia”, loosely translated.
• See, Spain is the #1 travel destination in Europe (#2 worldwide after the US).
• However, after selling paella & partying for decades now, a lot of Spaniards are having second thoughts.
• They’d love to change their brand and their image.
• To lure a different kind of tourist.
• Less noisy, more polished, hopefully with higher disposable income.
• How long would it take for Spain to shed its image of paella & partying?
• Shifting course would demand a massive change of mentality and a colossal reallocation of resources.
• It ain’t something that can be solved by the usual method of inviting Omnicom, Publics and WPP to an RFP.
• It took Toyota close to ten years to carve a niche for itself in the luxury auto segment.
• So much so that they had to launch a totally new brand to achieve it (that’d be Lexus).
• Can Spain become Switzerland or Sweden in, say, five years.
• Hardly.
• They can try though and they certainly should.
• Unbeknownst to a lot of people who descend upon its coasts to overeat, overdrink and roast their private parts under the sun on some of its long, winding and breathtaking stretches of beaches, Spain offers world class mountain skiing, trekking, rock climbing, horseback riding and even hunting.
• Plus diving, snorkeling, windsurfing, surfing and kite surfing.
• There are lots of spas and bucolic boutique hotels away from the noise.
• Amazing ancient sites, national parks and natural reserves.
• In the balmiest of weathers.
• Could Spain change tack and attempt to attract the upscale health & wellness tourist, a captive audience of the Swiss and the French since forever?
• Could noisy Spain become SPAin? (wink wink nudge nudge)
• Then again, disgruntled Spaniards might still complain.
• Spaniards, as is the case with Latinos in general, have been known to swing moods from lax detachment to hissy fits at the drop of a hat.
• Let’s say that Spain somehow manages to weed out the cheap tourists while increasing the influx of wealthier visitors.
• This will put upward pressure on the cost of living.
• Rentals and restaurants will get more expensive.
• Locals will be outpriced.
• A similar case to the The Cuban phenomenon, where tourists with hard cash get the royal treatment in secluded areas and locals provide cheap labor as second class citizens. *
• In such a scenario “tourismphobia” would only get worse.
• If I were to wax anthropological here I’d say that Spain is a Latin Catholic country where lucre is considered a filthy, sinful, degrading, bourgeois taboo.
• Making a living out of selling sangría and souvenirs to tourists feels so… undignified.
• These deeply rooted cultural atavisms are very very hard to unload from a society’s ethos.
• An awful lot of Spaniards, particularly in Catalonia and the Basque region, have a big chip on their shoulder.
• Spain still feels like Europe’s poor cousin.
• They would love to shed their image as a backward backwater.
• The land of toros, tapas & laissez faire?
• Europe’s playground?
• Ugh.
• They’d love to be regarded as the Sweden of the south.
• Which of course, would demand a massive effort of national reinvention.
• An attempt of this nature would be a sound argument if Spain was a technological powerhouse.
• It’d make total sense if the Spanish labor force was strong at STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math).
• Unfortunately, it is not.
• Spain, like many Latin Catholic countries, has a bit of a shortage in the brainiac entrepreneurial front.
• The dream job for an awful lot of young Spaniards is, allegedly, becoming a government employee.
• Or owning & operating a corner bar.
• I kid you not.
• There’s research to back this up.
• There is hope though.
• Some industries such as banking, manufacturing, renewable energy and infrastructure show considerable promise.
• The country still has a considerably long way to go to have the high tech might of, say, South Korea and its global brands such as Samsung, Kia or Hyundai.
• Unlike, say, England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden or Denmark, Spain lacks big global brand names.
• Spain needs its own Daimler-Benz, VW, BMW, FIAT, Danone, Nestlé, Lego, DHL, Ikea, Johnny Walker, Moët & Chandon, Hermés, Louis Vuitton, Novo Nordisk or Novartis.
• It’s only got Zara for now.
• And Santander Bank.
• And Real Madrid and Barça, to some extent.
• In short, it would be suicidal for Spain to turn its back on tourism overnight.
• It would be seriously harmful to the country’s recovering economic health.
• My humble advice to the Spanish people: relax, folks.
• Tu use the cliché: if it rains lemons, make lemonade.
• You’re getting tourists by the truckloads after one of the worst economic crisis in recent memory.
• Count your blessings and take them to the cleaners (with the best of manners, of course).
• Y’all are trying so hard to be regarded as a first world, forward-thinking, inclusive, tolerant, trash-recycling and energy-efficient society that, at times, it looks and sounds a bit desperate.
• Kind of overacted.
• If I were to play Freud here I’d say that I can certainly relate to your frustrations.
• What used to be a massive global empire has been humiliated once and again through several centuries now.
• Generation after generation after generation.
• Military defeats, territory loss, civil war, underdevelopment, famine, separatism and successive waves of outward migration to Latin America and Protestant Europe.
• Plus a considerable inward flow from Northern African Muslims.
• To add salt to the wound, ten years ago, when it looked like the country had finally found its footing, a new massive economic crisis hit it again, expelling millions from their jobs and, once again, from its borders.
• It is only natural that y’all have a vestigial sense of inadequacy.

*Allow me a little futuristic digression here. Bear with me. Raúl Castro will die soon.
Its is not news that a lot of people regard “La Transición” after el generalí Franco’s death as the roadmap to follow after the Castro regime is over. Willl Cuba be in a position to avoid the trappings that Spain is confronting now, 40 years after? Who knows.