Time of the community and time of tourism: notes about two festivities

Abstract

This article explores some of the principal implications and challenges that the rising touristification process of religious and popular festivals may have for local communities, at a time when they are becoming potential tourist attractions, with rising exposure in a broad range of media. In Portugal, many popular festivities are annually celebrated that have a religious character and also reflect the intersection of various elements, linked to both the religious calendar, and to natural and agricultural time and to secular time. As with other types of popular and religious events, such festivities are increasingly seen as potential tourism “products” that can reveal the uniqueness of the host communities and attract visitors. In this text, we intend to discuss the theoretical and methodological difficulty of thinking about the festivity separately from the local population that organises and participates in it, and which feels it a core element of local identity.
This exercise is based on analysis of information gathered from previous and ongoing research work into two festivities that are each experiencing such processes today, in their own different ways: the festivity of Bugiada and Mouriscada, or S. João de Sobrado, and the Semana Santa (Holy Week) of Braga.