Turismo ferroviário em Portugal nos anos de 1930

With the emergence of modernity in the Western world, tourism became undeniably important, immediately becoming an object of political attention. Portugal shared this phenomenon, through the development of domestic tourism travel thanks largely to the expansion of the national railway grid, which increased the number of potential domestic tourists, especially in the 1930s. This paper, of a theoretical and historical nature, will focus on two initiatives from the 1930s aimed at promoting railway tourism travel – mystery trains and popular trains – using a case study methodology. By analyzing the origins, formats and intentions of these initiatives, it is argued that the examples under study are components of a policy that seeks an identification of the population with the political and ideological projects of the First Republic and the Estado Novo.