Paper short abstract:

A particular chain of tourism accommodations created and owned by the Portuguese State has produced places and narratives of nationhood since the 1940s, participating in the social construction of history and culture, authenticity and tradition.

Paper long abstract:

Pousadas de Portugal is a particular chain of tourism accommodation created and owned by the Portuguese State that embodies an idea of nationhood. Since the 1940s, Pousadas' network has been enlarged with new buildings, monuments restorations and patrimony rehabilitations, reflecting different understandings of the past and the reconfigurations of national narratives about Portugal's history and tradition.

This paper explores how the social production of the Pousadas has mapped a national past by locating heritage and culture and creating visitable signs of authenticity. These located signs and meanings have been appropriated by political and social local actors with different powers and interests in proposing a narrative of the place. Representations of Pousadas as a network, as a place and as a building enlighten, in this sense, its social construction as spaces of sociation, as markers of local identity and as testimonies of past continuity. Pousadas participate, therefore, in several scales of social identification, related to the nation, to the collective and to self.

Simultaneously addressing tourism, space and identity related issues, Pousadas de Portugal were considered a privileged arena to thing about place as a social production and social construction, where different actors negotiate different meanings, interests and powers.