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The Tourist Industry |
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Religion
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One
service industry that might be able to provide some jobs is tourism.
Unfortunately Tras-os-Montes will never attract the Northern
European tourist who has only a short time in summer and wants to spend
it on the beach. There is
also a shortage of major monuments like cathedrals or imposing castles
to attract the more culturally minded tourist.
There is a possibility of developing eco-tourism in the Peneda
Gerês , the
Alvão, and the Montezinhos national parks, attracting people for
hiking and bird watching. Unfortunately,
there are few of these tourists, and they don’t spend a lot of money.
There are adequate hotels and restaurants in the region and some
of the countryside, especially the Barroso or the area in the upper
Douro valley, is spectacular. Many
towns though don’t make much of an effort to show off the little they
have. A case in point is
Chaves, with one of the most well preserved Roman bridges in the Iberian
Peninsula, which insists on not putting up any type of identifying
plaque in any language. There
are some isolated initiatives to sell their towns:
near Chaves on the veiga (the valley) a sign indicates the
road to Santo Estévão, “a medieval village from the thirteenth
century.” The
best example is Mirandela,
in neighboring Bragança district, which although smaller than the
district capitals has done wonders to attract tourists.
First it dammed up the river Tua in the center, creating a lake
for boating, then it built a new bridge across the river, thereby
preserving the old medieval bridge for foot traffic, then it placed
flowers and original statues all through the town winning a prize as
most florid European city, and finally it went so far as to place a sign
near the highway which said, “Welcome to Mirandela, a Transmontano
oasis.” This type of
daring has to be imitated in other places before the region can wake up
from its slumber and be able to compete in the twenty first century.
Living
from EU handouts certainly cannot be a viable future. The district of Vila Real, and all of Portugal, could follow an example becoming popular in neighboring Galicia. There the autonomous community has been divided into comarcas, which are not administrative divisions per se, but divisions grouping municipalities that have common geographical or economic interests, in order to stimulate development and attract tourism. Presently, Galicia has 7 of these comarcal centers functioning; 19 are to open shortly. These centers offer information, group visits to the region, permanent expositions showing the geography, history, artistic heritage, and nature, employing the latest state of the art techniques of videos and “infographs”, as well as recuperated ethnographic elements. In addition, they have a selection of the products of the comarca and small auditoriums for multiple use, equipped with a videoconference room, fax, access to Internet, Email etc. The objective is to not only attract visitors to the regions, but also to support local initiatives, promote local handicrafts, and promote investments. A
visit to a relatively unknown comarca, Celanova, only an hour’s
drive from Chaves, is an eye-opener.
Signs point to the “centro comarcal”, which has been
installed inside the tower of a medieval village, Vilanova
de los Infantes, one kilometer from the small town of Celanova.
Highly trained personnel go out of their way to give the visitor
what amounts to an immersion into culture about the attractions of the comarca.
An out of the way area, without a great number of monuments—similar
to the district of Vila Real—is able to take out the smallest detail
and make it interesting, giving the visitor the impression he has been
in the equivalent to Toledo, Granada, Sintra, or Coimbra.
This is what needs to be done in the district of Vila Real if the
tourist industry is to be taken seriously. Another small Galician town, which was practically unknown twenty years ago and has now won international prizes for its renovation projects is Allariz, located between Verín and Ourense just off the Autovia das Rias Baixas.
Introduction to Economy | Agriculture | Industry | Commerce
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