Road Tourism Implementation in Historic Spanish National Roads

Abstract

Changes that have occurred in recent decades in global tourism phenomenon have led to the need of new sustainable, diverse, and non-massive types of tourism. One of these examples is cultural routes tourism, in which there a specific modality consisting of traveling historic and practically disused roads, being the American Route 66 the best-known case. Taking this example, as well as the already implemented itinerary of N-2 in Portugal, the objective of this paper is to determine which are the Spanish national roads susceptible to tourist use. For this objective, criteria are proposed to identify which of these itineraries turn out to be more suitable for this purpose. The results determine the need to select the longest roads, with sufficient tourist attractions, and with fewer incompatibilities with tourist use. Likewise, recommendations are established to the competent agents for the correct development of these itineraries as a satisfactory cultural tourism experience.