Ruralismo y tecnotropismo: turismo y desarrollo en la Bonaigua

The article presents an ethnographic research carried out in the Mancomunidad de la Bonaigua, located in the province of Alicante (Spain). After an ethnographic description of the tourism environment, it is analysed the progressive presentation of rural tourism as the instrument for the economic development of inland municipalities and of the critial situation of the sunandsea tourism type in Alicante. The combination of these objectives under what we called ruralism, presented as the ‘reality’ by technotropism, mediates in the signifying processes in the Mancomunidad. The anthropological analysis applies the theoretical model of the conversión of place through the meaningful mediation of tourism space