This critical reflection dissects the layered and often contradictory discursive constructions of the Costa del Sol, revealing how official narratives have historically masked underlying dynamics of power, exclusion, and speculative urbanism. Chema Collado Segovia argues that while tourism was framed as a national salvation strategy during the Franco regime, it was also seen as morally threatening and spatially marginal, leading to a paradoxical encouragement of its expansion in “peripheral” regions like the Costa del Sol. Through an archaeology of media, academic, and governmental discourse, the article exposes how the so-called “miracle” of touristic growth is constructed through mythologized pioneers and depoliticized heroism, obscuring state orchestration and the capitalist reconfiguration of territory. In particular, the author denounces the erasure of collective agency and the transformation of urban planning into an opaque mechanism of speculative interests, where citizens internalize narratives of emancipation and modernity that justify uneven development. The text culminates in the metaphorical act of fleeing the N-340 road, a spatial symbol of the imposed linearity and developmental logic that governs the coast, inviting instead a gaze towards the margins and unrecorded voices of the urban experience. In doing so, it proposes a re-politicization of urban memory, one that acknowledges the symbolic violence of its erasures and reclaims the capacity to inhabit critically and narratively.
Collado Segovia, C. (2016) ‘Representaciones colectivas de la Costa del Sol, discursos oficiales y puntos de fuga’, URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 6(1), pp. 35–50.