Religions for the Public: Religious Diversity and Heritage and Tourism Promotion in Contemporary Spain

Abstract

Although some classic authors of the Social Sciences predicted that the inevitable process of secularization would entail the loss of religious practices and the importance of ritual in contemporary societies throughout the 20^th century, this process has not finally ocurred in the right terms in which it was thought to happen. We are, therefore, facing a stage of post-secularization. If Catholicism has marked life and morality in Spanish society for centuries and the 20^th century witnessed a very marked promotion of it during the Franco regime, once at the end of the 60's legislation began to allow the expression public awareness of religious diversity, the multiple confessions became more visible until reaching the current situation, in which their presence can be seen both in the public space and in the media. In our article we intend to show how this visibility, which concerns both Catholicism itself and the rest of the cultural heritage linked to them and their tourist promotion, which allows that the visitor comes into contact with the various religious through a greater knowledge of their legacy of their places of worship.