Pearse Hutchinson’s Ecopoetics on Spain (1950s-1960s)

The aim of this article is to examine Pearse Hutchinson’s critical attitude towards the tourist development of Spain in the 1960s and 1970s through his poetic production. Hutchinson’s poetic analysis of Spanish mass tourism will be divided into two separate phases of development and this article will pay particular attention to the second one, which was developed during his second sojourn in the country in the 1960s and 1970s. It will analyse how, during this period, Hutchinson’s eco-poetics reveals an illuminating approach to the tourist industry, and how the latter intended to put a friendly face on a repressive military dictatorship. Tourism as a “mechanism of power” (Crumbaugh, Destination Dictatorship 20) was necessary for the regime in order to assure its authority. Hutchinson’s poetry was able to reproduce a lament on the deleterious effects on the landscape. However, it will be seen how the poet avoids an idealisation of nature or the search of a pristine habitat. Certainly, in some cases, his poetry lampoons modern tourists’ nostalgic search for an authentic place.