Fonte: ROTUR. Revista de Ocio y Turismo; Vol. 14 No. 2 (2020); 70-87
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Resumo: Nature sports tourism has undergone a huge surge in growth in recent decades. Metaphorically, it might be said that the latest revolution to transform life in rural areas has been the ‘colonisation of leisure’ in its small towns and natural spaces. In the most notable cases, small, out of the way villages and retreats have become overrun by tourists and seen their economies transformed by speculation. This process of social and economic change has been promoted by EU programmes for rural development, such as the ongoing LEADER and FEADER initiatives, which have been running continuously since 1991. These policies have reinvented rural spaces by imbuing them with new material meanings (tranquillity, adventure, quality of life, etc.) and capitalising on that re-imaging through new economic activities, such as nature sports tourism. As this is an artificial process affecting pre-existing spaces, meanings and economic models (e.g. agriculture, forestry, hunting, etc.), it can also lead to conflicts of interests, as witnessed in the political, economic and social relations between locals and newcomers in rural areas. This article examines this process with the aim of providing proposals for how to manage and organise nature sports tourism through social dialogue and cooperation.
