Cuadernos de Turismo, 27, (2011), 1021-1028 Cuadernos de Turismo, nº 27, (2011); pp. 1021-1028 Universidad de Murcia ISSN: 1139-7861 RELIGIOUS TOURISM IN SPAIN: THE GOOSE THAT LAID THE GOLDEN EGG? AN OLD TRADITION, VERSUS AN EMERGING FORM OF TOURISM 1 Gemma Cànoves Valiente and Asunción Blanco Romero Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona gemma.canoves@uab.es, asuncion.blanco@uab.cat 1. INTRODUCTION The aim of this article is to show how religious tourism, just like cultural tourism, is a form of travel and a further expression of the commercialisation of culture, or to be more precise, the commercialisation of religion and popular devotion. Heritage, in images, sanctuaries, beliefs and devotions, is related with culture, identity, religious feeling and faith, but also with the consumption of a tourism product. On the basis of this hypothesis, the cases of Montserrat, the Camino de Santiago (Way of St. James) and Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Granada share the common nexus of complementarization between religious heritage and tourism. The examples given are a form of cultural expression that has been established as a space for tourist visits-consumption with a religious and cultural meaning. The article is divided into four sections. The first focuses on the state of the question and the definition of terms. The second notes the volume of religious tourism and the difficulties with the lack of available data, the third explains the case studies as examples of the phenomenon and in the fourth we present our conclusions and future lines of research into this old-new form of tourism. 2. RELIGIOUS TOURISM: STATE OF THE QUESTION In Spain, studies of religious tourism are few and recent (Llurdés, 1995; Esteve Secall, 2002, Cànoves, 2006, Gil de Arriba, 2006, Porcal Gonzalo, 2006, Sarasa and Espejo, 2006, Villa Diaz, 2006, Esteve Secall, 2002, Santos Solla, 2002, 2006). This 1 This article was developed under the project «Tourism, territory and identity: processes of revaluation of spaces and activities in the Spanish countryside. A comparative analysis of cases in Catalonia, Galicia and Murcia, the National Plan I + D + I, funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation. Reference: CSO2009-11 793.