THE TOURIST POTENTIAL OF MINING RESOURCES IN DISAVANTAGED RURAL AREAS: AN ASSESSMENT OF ACTORS AND EXPERIENCES

Abstract

After falling in disuse years ago, the heritage coming from declining activities such as mining goes through an important stage as a resource for a new way of understanding the cultural tourism. In fact there are many experiences with very positive economic impacts on the territory mostly in those countries with an industrial culture (United Kingdom, Germany, United States, etc.). Spain offers some interesting examples of how the conservation of the heritage and its adaptation to the tourist uses is providing positive outcomes some regions of the country (Asturias, Andalucía, Cataluña, etc.). Despite this success, not all mining Heritage is able to drive by itself the creation of wealth and employment even with the involvement of the public administration. Precisely because of that misunderstanding among the public administrations involved and the many difficulties found to take off are conditioning even the beginning of this tourism process. This will be the real core of this contribution.