New Maritimity and Heritagization in Catalonia’s Small-Scale Fisheries

Abstract

Catalonia is undergoing a process of maritime heritagization embedded in the coast’s postindustrial context and the growing intensification of tourism over the past 50 years, providing some small-scale fishermen with opportunities to adapt to the current fishery crisis. These initiatives are transforming conventional fishing patterns and may take different shapes: services for tourists who want to go out on the water for a day of “real fishing” on boat tours, the use and restoration of centuries-old ships, and local seafood catering services providing meals on land and at sea. This paper explores these initiatives in light of new mobility studies, aiming to analyze the changes that are occurring in the work of small-scale fisheries, to situate them in a wider structural context, and to understand the extent of these recent transformations and how they are tied to heritagization mechanisms. We wish to shed light on whether these changes are related to a decrease in small-scale fishing activity and a related loss in local environmental knowledge, or a form of renewal of local fishing practices and of “being in the coastal world.” Could it be the dawn of a “new maritimity,” a part of the rising “new rurality”?