Who owns the name of a place? On place branding and logics in two villages in Galicia,Spain

What’s in a name?

What’s in the name of a place that is being transformed into a brand? Who owns the name of a place? What are the logics ¹ at work when the name of a town or region is being commoditised following a marketing logic? Are there alternative ways to understand names, places and heritage outside corporate culture and marketing logics? These are some of the questions that guide this article in which we have analysed three case studies on the Costa da Morte, ² in the northwest corner of Spain.

To be named is to acquire existence, to be known and recognised and, therefore, to be localised in time and space. To name a place implies giving it recognition, and from a marketing logic viewpoint, to have a name with a recognisable genealogy is also to possess a scarce resource on which our reputation depends (Anholt, 2007a: 7). To use a place name as a commodity is becoming increasingly common when applying marketing strategies to what are considered ‘cultural products’. In doing so, to possess a place name as a brand is to be differentiated from those competing in the marketplace (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2011; Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1998: 152; Kotler and Armstrong, 1999: 249; Morgan et al., 2004).

Branding is a well-established marketing concept that refers to the process of designing, planning and communicating a name and the identity symbols linked to the name in order to build or manage reputation (Anholt, 2007a: 5). In using identity symbols and cultural practices, branding strategies are powerful and consistent tools, which have the ability to produce emotional and psychological attachment with consumers and financial value for the brand owner (Okonkwo, 2007: 9). In doing so, place branding processes economic aims so as to attract tourists, stimulate inward investment and boost exports. But branding is also intended to reinforce emotional connections between the visitor and the destination and reduce consumer search cost and perceived risk (Blain et al., 2005: 337; Dinnie, 2008: 64).

As Anholt and Okonkwo have explored (Anholt, 2007b: 6; Okonkwo, 2007: 9), definitions of branding are based on ownership discourse. This hazardous discourse on property and descent rights is also present in heritage and cultural practices, as Hodder (2010) has analysed. The answer to ‘who is the owner of a name, a place or heritage?’ is quite complex; for instance, when considering a specific heritage element which is a private property or when a person or a group of people have been identified as the creators of a name, place or heritage element, it belongs to them and consequently not to others. But when we are dealing with villages’ names, intangible heritage, cultural practices and identity symbols, such as we will analyse in this article, their treatment as private property cannot be seen as objective or neutral. As Noyes points out in her article on traditional culture, it usually happens that ‘cultural products’ are co-opted by ‘self-proclaimed community representatives, including the state’, local businesspeople, politicians, marketing experts, elites who do not live in the village or perform an art and so on (Noyes, 2011: 40–41). The reformulation of commons such as city names, heritages and cultural practices, turning them into constrained and scarce private properties controlled by owners, is in line with the liberal capitalism logic that is colonising our cognitive system (Blondeau et al., 2004). In the light of this, our article analyses how the logic of propertisation, branding and corporate culture ³ has permeated local discourses about place names.

The expanding nature of branding strategies and corporate culture is an example of how the Authorised Heritage Discourse (Smith, 2006) cannot be linked to a ‘top-bottom’ dichotomy but rather to a heritage regime that is being naturalised as the unquestioned way of being in the world (Alonso González, 2013; Bendix et al., 2012). It is not just a matter of an elitist discourse that may (or may not) be assumed by local population. What we wish to convey in this article is what Karl Polanyi predicted on the ‘oil spot’ effect that market economy has over social structures, customs and cultural environment (Polanyi, 1989: 444). In the line of marketing strategies, destination branding logics are permeating social structures and daily life performances and are molecularly embodied in citizenship (Gramsci, 2010: 284). We have found that municipal officials, tourism agents, local restaurants, café and bar owners and village residents are gradually incorporating and embodying these discourses on market economy and marketing in relation to their common heritage, with the name of their villages and their folklore.

In order to analyse how destination branding, heritage propertisation and corporate culture are permeating two coastal villages in Galicia (Spain), we are not only looking at the ‘host–guest’ relations that have been thoroughly analysed in anthropology, tourism studies and destination branding literature (Cohen, 1988; Urry, 1990). In this article, based on ethnographic fieldwork, we are focusing on ‘host–host’ relations (Silva, 2013: 13) in order to add some nuance to how the effects of marketing logic are being implemented locally and assumed as the only feasible logic even when managing marginal sites and practices in a marginal region in a marginal crypto-colonial country such as Spain (Herzfeld, 2004: 8). ⁴

The underlying idea for this article came to us while carrying out two different research projects. One of them consisted of ethnographic fieldwork on crafts performed by women and their heritagisation and touristification processes from a feminist perspective. The other one was concerned with the research project ‘Processes of Heritagisation in the Camino: Santiago-Fisterra-Muxía’ to understand how the promotion of the Camino affects the villages through which it passes. We were each working in different research contexts, but we were both trying to find alternative models for heritage management. However, when analysing the different case studies on the coast of Galicia (Spain) described in this article, we came across quite the opposite: the reproduction of marketing and place branding logic.

Threatened heritage

Heritage regimes and the internalisation of their logics constitute a relatively recent process in many parts of the world. Even though the heritage regime has been labelled a ‘global phenomenon’, this category does not exist in all societies (Davallon, 2010: 43). It was after the Second World War when the concern about heritage protection became a metacultural discourse affecting different countries (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2004: 52). Monument protection was defended as a duty to the past as they represented the power, greatness and beauty of a nation that should be preserved for future generations (Choay, 2001). The 1954 Hague Convention was the first time that the expression ‘heritage’ was substituted by ‘cultural property’ as it was used linked to the necessity of protection ‘in the Event of Armed Conflict’ (Prott and O’Keefe, 1992: 312). As Brown (2005) notes, by the 1970s and 1980s, there was an increasing tendency to substitute the expression ‘cultural heritage’ for ‘cultural property’ (p. 41). During these decades, the incorporation of a more anthropological and holistic view of culture by considering intangible heritage, performances and oral traditions didn’t change the treatment of cultural practices, which were also considered as material property owned by homogeneous communities with property rights on them (Noyes, 2011: 40–41).

In the 1990s, with the rise of neoliberalism and what Castells called the ‘Network Society’ (Castells, 2000), heritage appeared only to be seen as a property, a resource, an inalienable right and a sign of distinction and modernity (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2004: 59; Noyes, 2011: 40). Since then, heritage came to be thought of and practised from a marketing perspective. This transition has been seen as a normal development to suit global trends in global competition. It is common to find uncritical approaches focused solely on strategic and quantitative aspects to better position and market cultural products (Tadelis, 1999).

The implementation of marketing strategies and ownership discourses regarding ‘cultural products’ is a fact nowadays, although, as Comaroff and Comaroff and Blondeau et al. argue, cultural products don’t necessarily follow the standard economic rationality. If we consider identity symbols, cultural practices, city names and heritage as the raw material for branding strategies, it cannot be said that these materials are scarce or that they will be exhausted by mass circulation. On the contrary, these materials follow a counter-economic rationality, ‘the larger the supply the greater the demand’, as massive circulation creates an added value for their use and reinforces the name, cultural practice or heritage status (Blondeau et al., 2004: 17; Comaroff and Comaroff, 2011: 38).

Despite the counter-economic rationality of cultural practices, names and places, there are some destabilising issues that provoke anxiety to protect them as ‘citizens fear that their languages, traditional practices and values are being subverted by cultural influences originating elsewhere, mostly in the developed West’ (Brown, 2005: 43). Therefore, places, names, folklore, identity symbols and cultural practices have been considered scarce resources to be defended as property that may be alienated. In this sense, we’re witnessing some kind of hegemonic intellectual property regime that reduces biological and cultural aspects to alienable rights and private effects in which protection against globalisation and reputation management are a must. As part of this way of reasoning, in the face of global markets it becomes necessary to employ global regimes of control in which bureaucracy, quality control and marketing strategies are implemented into the everyday (Brown, 2005: 44; Comaroff and Comaroff, 2011: 218; Hafstein, 2014; Strathern, 2003), to the extent of recommending the Orwellian fantasy in which branding strategies are applied to public diplomacy, nation management and child education in order to encourage future visitors, residents, investors, advocates and supporters (Anholt, 2007a). This is the case, for example, of Marca España, adopted as a state policy in order to improve the image of the country abroad and domestically, prioritising economic terms and developing specific actions in culture, technology, transport, language, cuisine, education and so on in order to boost exports, attract foreign investment, support the internationalisation of its companies, raise tourism and, in short, contribute to Spain’s economic recovery. ⁵

Cultural prophylaxis

Cultural appropriation is mostly seen as a negative consequence of globalisation in which the more powerful organisms such as pharmaceutical and fashion corporations squeeze cultural goods out of less powerful communities, market them and make large profits. In recognising such injustices carried out by powerful forces, the research, description, registration, regulation, encapsulation, protection, commoditisation and marketisation of cultural practices is seen as the only suitable discourse and the only acceptable approach to what have been labelled as ‘cultural products’. In this case, we use the concept of cultural prophylaxis to refer to how cultural practices and city names are conceived as unique and untouchable material that must be protected, encapsulated and regulated to avoid being attacked (even if this implies detaching them from everything) – a process that can be described as ‘preventive war’. International institutions such as World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) show how to list, regulate, protect as a private possession, and commoditise heritage, names and cultural practices. Marketing and name branding strategies are applied to marginal places and practices, such as we will describe in the examples below, and regarded as tools for empowerment, nationalist or identity struggles with supranational bodies such as the Spanish ‘mainstream’ identity.

The logic of propertisation and protection has been progressively implemented in local contexts as the only available alternative, for ‘the weakest are best protected by even the most imperfect international legal safeguards’ (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2011: 56). In doing so, alternative logics for managing names, heritages and cultural practices are being colonised by branding and marketing approaches, which are presented as the only possible solution.

Commoditisation of cultural practices, city names and landscapes is becoming a source for community construction and sometimes the only suitable resource for economic subsistence in the most pauperised populations (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2011: 38). But it must be said that protection and propertisation create exclusive rights concerning participation and obtaining economic or symbolic profits, which sometimes deepen inequalities (Noyes, 2011: 43). Branding and protection processes are a form of inclusion as they create the illusion of an essentialised and unified cultural identity (Bayart, 2005), but they’re also a form of exclusion of what is thought to be without value. These non-neutral practices alienate people from their own heritage, which is sanctioned, homogenised and portrayed as stable material objects alien to the necessity of change and adaptation to new social situations.

International, national, regional and even local authorities are developing legal strategies to protect intangible heritage from damage or cultural misappropriation by registering it as a guarantee of promotion and social valorisation in local communities. Brown (2005) argues that ‘none of these legal strategies fit the circumstances of intangible heritage particularly well and it probably makes sense to create new sui generis regulatory regimes to meet the specific needs of traditional communities, especially indigenous ones’ (p. 45). This maladaptation of heritage logics and protection figures to cultural property has led policymakers to use private corporations’ logics, such as trademark creation, patents, the Spanish figure for food products Denominación de Origen Controlada or the French figure Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, place branding and advertising, property and name registration, and land and properties purchase. In this sense, we are witnessing what the French philosopher Rancière predicted about statecraft adopting, more and more openly, the rhetoric and logic of for-profit corporations. These practices are no longer a shameful secret that is hidden; they are an openly declared truth through which our governments acquire legitimacy and compete increasingly amongst themselves (Rancière and Pons, 1996: 113). Governments and local authorities are not only mediating, channelling and ensuring community access to collective heritage, but they are also acting as market spokesmen by privatising heritage and removing it from the common domain through branding and marketing strategies.

These marketing strategies – and the naturalisation of the rationale on which they are based – will be explored throughout the rest of this article by looking at the particular cases of the villages of Camariñas and Finisterre, located on the Costa da Morte in Galicia, Spain. First, we will concentrate on the general area of Costa da Morte and its promotion via LEADER funds, and, afterwards, we will focus on each of these villages.

The promotion of Costa da Morte

Costa da Morte is a territorial label that aimed at forging emergent identity links among the inhabitants of one of the poorest areas in Galicia. The coastline is distinctive for its high cliffs, peninsulas and coves that give protection to small villages. This complex geography made the area quite inaccessible from other parts of Galicia. Although there are literary references to the name ‘Costa da Morte’ that date back to the early twentieth century, it was used as a poetic expression to describe the area and there is no evidence that it was employed as a territorial marker. ⁶ The term, as a place name, was fully established in the 1990s to promote the coastal area between Cape Finisterre and the Sisargas Islands in Malpica, Northwest Galicia (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Map of the Costa da Morte, where Camariñas and Finisterre are located.

During that decade, an association called Neria was founded to promote and coordinate rural development and it was linked to European Union (EU) LEADER funds for the development of rural areas. The main objective of Neria was to ‘promote and coordinate rural development, improve life conditions and to help end rural depopulation’. ⁷ The association wanted to promote the whole region and needed to find a good name for the area.

There are different accounts to explain the origin of the name Costa da Morte. The term ‘morte’ (‘death’ in English) might be linked to the fact that this coastline represents Europe’s continental Finisterrae (‘end of the world’ in Latin), where the land ends and the sun sets in a mare tenebrosum or dark sea, as the Atlantic Ocean was called in medieval times; but the name could also be related to the numerous shipwrecks in the area. As the official guidebook for the area explains, there is a dark legend regarding Galician inhabitants who were believed to have provoked shipwrecks in order to steal their load. ⁸

To use ‘morte’ as a place brand was indeed a risk. According to Neria representatives, the name Costa da Morte was initially rejected by some people in the area – as well as in the association – because of the connotations of the word ‘death’, but it turned out to be a success in terms of place branding. The marginal position of this corner of Galicia, both geographically and economically, made the promoters of the place brand select a name that is also ‘on the margins’. Neria’s secretary explains this in a simple and convincing manner: ‘we are the periphery; in the European context, Galicia is the periphery of Europe, and Costa da Morte is the periphery of Galicia’ (15 February 2011, audio recording GR014). Those on the margins are looked down on by the official discourse and are, at the same time, part of the emotional repertoire and symbolic universe of dominant culture (Shields, 1991: 5, cited after Herrero, 2005: 122). These characteristics – being rejected and on the margins – allow the ‘marginal places’ to become ‘mythical places’. According to anthropologist Nieves Herrero, the stigma of marginal places, such as Costa da Morte, needs reconfiguration processes to change the emotional repertoire linked to the place. In the case we are studying, the Neria association and the mayor of Dumbría (one of Neria’s promoters) made a conscious effort to take the stigma of being a poor and isolated place and to transform it into a tourist destination, a place worthy of being visited. In fact, the same reasons that forged the image of an isolated, semi-abandoned and poor part of Galicia also turned the Costa da Morte into a tourist destination. The Costa da Morte stigma is conveyed in the words of Neria’s representative: ‘All our life we were told that people from the Costa da Morte were only good at preparing suitcases’ (15 February 2011, audio recording: GR-14S001). By ‘preparing suitcases’, he refers to the long history of migration of this area.

The construction of the name ‘Costa da Morte’ took a lot of effort, as the secretary of Neria explains:

We put a lot of energy into the debate regarding the name of Costa da Morte as a brand. It took us a lot of effort to achieve it. It was a battle. And now everybody wants to be part of the Costa da Morte. (15 February 2011, audio recording GR-14S001) ⁹

In fact, the EU LEADER programme funding was at the very heart of the origin of the initial marketing plan for the Costa da Morte. The mayor of Dumbría explains that ‘in order to apply for European funding, we needed to create an association; we needed to go to Europe via citizen participation rather than via the institutions’ (7 February 2011, audio recording GR011). Therefore, the association was created as a result of the decision to apply to EU LEADER funds.

At a national level, the name ‘Costa da Morte’ is acknowledged due to not only the marketing efforts of the tourist sector in the area but also another element that cannot be controlled by place branding strategies: the unexpected ecological catastrophe of the sinking of the oil tanker ‘Prestige’ in November 2002. The Costa da Morte was Ground Zero, ¹⁰ and this put it on the map. The sinking of the tanker gave rise to the innumerable appearances of the Costa da Morte’s name in the mass media, both nationally and internationally. A curious coincidence caused the most powerful tool for building pride and prestige – in the sense of recognition – to be the sinking of a ship called Prestige.

‘Camariñas bobbin lace, quality product’

Bobbin lace making is a cultural practice widely performed by women throughout the whole Costa da Morte and also inland. It constitutes a wide ‘taskscape’ (Ingold, 2010: 97) wherein bobbin lace is still being crafted and represents a significant economic resource controlled by women in a matrifocal, subsistence and fishing-dependent economy (see Figure 2). ¹¹

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Figure 2.

Camariñas handcrafts made by skilful women.

Until recent decades, the region’s most important commercial port was Camariñas, so every single piece of lace made by the women, the palilleiras, was labelled and exported as ‘Camariñas bobbin-lace’. It was this relation with marketing and commerce which caused the entire bobbin lace production in the whole area to be internationally identified with one village alone: ‘Camariñas’. This enduring relation between lace as a product and Camariñas was an unintended name branding campaign that even today continues to put a peripheral village of 5774 inhabitants on the map. ¹²

This practice has been carried out in the informal economy and controlled at family level. The bobbin lace used to be sold to intermediary buyers when a family needed the money. The local government didn’t use to be involved in women’s issues. But since the 1990s, the local council has been developing several heritagisation processes (Sánchez-Carretero, 2013: 388–389) in this village, such as the creation of a local museum of bobbin lace, an international trademark annual fair and fashion show, and a school to teach young girls. All these processes are aimed at upgrading the indissoluble link between the name of the village and a distinctive product so as to differentiate Camariñas from other villages and reinsert bobbin lace into a global economic logic. To patrimonialise this traditional craft was to put Camariñas on the map and send the message, using the mayor’s words, that it is not ‘an ordinary fishing village known for its seafood, fishing and misfortunes’ (20 August 2014, audio recording: AU047). In this marketing and place branding campaign, the village name and the cultural practice were thought of as products and were registered as a trademark by the local council. Thus, Camariñas is not only the name of a place on the global map but also, as a rural development agent explains, ‘a brand that protects and adds value to our handmade bobbin lace’ (21 June 2013, audio recording: AU014) in the line of branding strategies and corporate culture. ¹³

The registered trademark is working as a protection figure for this unique cultural practice and was created ad hoc by local politicians with the idea that any kind of protection is better than none at all. As explained earlier in this article, heritage protection figures may not be enough to prevent cultural misappropriation of this crucial cultural and mixed economic activity. For politicians and craftswomen, bobbin lace production ‘[this] is not only about culture, this is also about an economic activity. And if it’s not helping the economy then there is no point in protecting it’ (10 February 2014, audio recording AU042, employee of the municipality working to promote bobbin lace) (Jiménez-Esquinas, 2016). They cannot understand the transformation of bobbin lace making into a cultural curiosity for tourists if it’s not economically profitable. In creating a registered trademark, they are following the ‘Galician Craft Plan’, ¹⁴ the guidelines of the European funds for rural development, which are controlled by local government. They are de-assembling the common heritage and reassembling it in a global logic of capital and marketing, which is supposedly more economically profitable for the impoverished local economy. This is the logic embedded in international institutions, regional and local governments, local craftswomen and people in general who are convinced that corporate culture and branding strategies are the only feasible solutions to their marginal situation.

Regarding place branding and creating a trademark, the local government controls its production, preservation of specific patterns and tasks, quality standards, marketing and distribution of benefits. As Rancière argues, local government is playing an active role in the privatisation and marketisation of local products, from a rather paternalistic standpoint (Rancière and Pons, 1996). But it is also true that the trademark endorsed by local government is a protective umbrella that offers a quality guarantee for global buyers who have difficulties and are on unequal grounds when dealing with local craftswomen. Local politicians assure that, ideally, the craftswomen themselves should have taken the initiative, but as this was not the case, they helped the women protect their craft in the hope that this would revive the local economy.

As Kirshenblatt-Gimblett states, all heritage interventions change how people understand their culture and themselves, and this process is also changing the way people understand bobbin lace production (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2004: 58). In this particular case, the delineation of the Encaixe de Camariñas trademark guidelines and requirements has caused some conflict in its establishment of what exactly needs to be protected (craftswomen and their knowledge, cardboard patterns, practice, materials, end product, etc.), who produces Camariñas bobbin lace, who takes part in the business and, consequently, who is excluded from it. Because of this, some palilleiras from nearby villages such as Muxía and Vimianzo have rebelled against the uncompromising and exclusive identification of their craft with the village of Camariñas, for this is excluding them. Finding no support from the local government of Muxía – which is more interested in the heritagisation processes of fishing and the Camino de Santiago – some women are developing small businesses and personal projects to look after themselves in the face of branding strategies developed in Camariñas. As a Muxía lacemaker declared, ‘perhaps it would have been more appropriate to create a supralocal cooperative to face precariousness, to regulate the sector and then overcome localisms. Now we are very old and all we are thinking of is our retirement’ (field notes, 11 August 2013, lacemaker in her 60s).

The privatisation and instrumentalisation of the place name by local authorities are heightening the conflict among craftswomen throughout the task space because it doesn’t include a large number of traditional craftswomen. As the trademark is named after a particular village and has been used as a marketing strategy, some harmful discussions are taking place among the artisans concerning birthplace, genealogies and place of residence. Heated talks are going on among the palilleiras as to what and who will be protected by the registered trademark, by which criterion will they be discriminated and where is the line that will determine who are ‘the others’. It is yet to be seen whether these ad hoc protection and promotion tools linked to place branding strategies are efficient when applied to intangible heritage.

The case of Finisterre: to be or not to be ‘on the map’

Cape Finisterre is located in Galicia, Northwest Spain. It is said to be the westernmost point of continental Europe, although geographers have shown that both Cape Touriñán – also in Galicia and very close to Fisterra – and Cape Roca in Portugal are further west. Other European mythical ‘ends of the world’ include Land’s End in Britain, Finistère in French Brittany and Dingle in Ireland. The end of the world is linked to the idea of conquering territories and expanding the limits of the known world. To cite Herrero, ‘these places have frequently been the objects of symbolic elaborations; aspects such as being on the limit or their rough and dangerous seas defined them as liminal spaces, associated with the unknown’ (Herrero, 2009: 166). The name Finisterre is applied to the municipality, the cape and the region or comarca. Finisterre is the second tourist destination in Galicia, after Santiago de Compostela. As opposed to the Costa da Morte and Camariñas, Finisterre did not endorse any active name branding marketing strategy because its name was already widely known both nationally and internationally.

In addition to receiving tourists to the cape and the lighthouse, in the last decade the village of Finisterre has also attracted many pilgrims as it is the finishing point of one of the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) routes – a route that is not recognised by the Catholic church because it starts in Santiago, instead of ending there, a route that is called ‘the Camino of the Atheists’ by many pilgrims because their final goal is to see the sun set in the Atlantic. The name Finisterre currently implies a twofold experience: ‘the end of the Camino’ and ‘the end of the world’. The municipal narrative repertoire stresses this double fact. ¹⁵

In this part of the article, we will focus on how the names ‘Finisterre’ (in Spanish) and ‘Fisterra’ (in Galician) are perceived by the local population; we will analyse how the idea of place branding, implicit in the phrase ‘to be put on the map’, has been naturalised. By ‘naturalised’ we mean an idea that is not questioned as it represents ‘how things should naturally be’. By examining the different uses of the expression ‘to be put on the map’, we will provide a different approach to place branding logic and how it permeates narratives and practices carried out by different local actors.

During fieldwork in Finisterre, the expression ‘to be put on the map’ was repeated in various contexts: conversations in cafés, bars, restaurants, hostels and hotels; interviews with institutional public figures such as the mayor of Finisterre or the priest; and formal and informal conversations with shopkeepers, postwomen and fishermen. Even though the research conducted in Finisterre did not focus initially on the topic of place branding, the various contexts in which the expression ‘to be put in the map’ was used indicated that it was considered a relevant issue by local inhabitants. Two main narrative contexts of ‘being put on the map’ were recorded: first, the use of Fisterra (in Galician) versus Finisterre (in Castilian or Spanish) on maps, and, second, the appearance of Finisterre on television for the weather forecast.

During fieldwork in Finisterre, our collaborators considered the name of their village to be Fisterra (in Galician) and that they are Fisterráns. Therefore, the emotional link is established with the label ‘Fisterra’. Surprisingly, in conversations about the promotion of the place, many restaurant and bar owners expressed that Finisterre (in Spanish) should be used to promote the village. For instance, Antonio, in his mid-40s and owner of a bar well-known by pilgrims, insisted on the importance of keeping the ‘name of Finisterre on the map … and by insisting on the Galician term “Fisterra” we get the opposite effect’ (field notes, 20 July 2011). According to Antonio, the village needs to be marketed as ‘Finisterre instead of Fisterra because that is how we show on the maps; that is how everybody knows us, and we need to be on the map’ (field notes, 20 July 2011). Finisterre should be the name used in every tourism brochure because of its international relevance: ‘A name is also heritage’ (field note, 15 June 2011, bar owner). The idea is that old maps already included the reference to Finisterre, and therefore, it’s a term with added value that should always be used in the same way (see Figure 3). Despite this debate as to which name should be promoted, the municipality does not have a policy regarding the issue. The name Fisterra, in Galician, is used in most of the brochures about the place and on notice boards located in public places.

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Figure 3.

1696 map of Europe showing Finisterre.

Another context in which the expression ‘being put on the map’ is employed is related to the conflict between Finisterre and Muxía. Both villages have recently been promoted due to their importance for the Camino de Santiago, and both claim their village to be the finishing point of the Camino. Pilgrims can go first to Finisterre and then to Muxía, or vice versa, or they can decide to end their pilgrimage in just one of these places. There is a clear rivalry between the two villages, as illustrated by the creation of the organisation ‘Fisterra, the true end of the Camino’. One of the conflicts between the two villages is related to the presence of their names on the weather forecast on Spanish public television (TVE1). In the last few years, instead of including Finisterre on the weather maps, the place name used to indicate the weather of the area is Muxía. As the pilgrim hostel keeper explains, ‘All our life the name Fisterra came up on the [weather] maps; how is it that now only Muxía appears?’ (field notes, 19 July 2011). The owners of a hotel and restaurant explain that ‘Muxía is now in the isobars and we cannot see Fisterra. Fisterra used to be the most important point on navigation maps; it was the most important point’ (field notes, 19 July 2011). María, Finisterre’s postwoman, thinks likewise: ‘People from Muxía were smarter and that’s fine. A war broke out here when our name was taken out of the television news. The cape [Finisterre] is more important for the sea, I think’ (field notes, 21 July 2011). As geographically Muxía is located on a cape between Fisterra and Camariñas it seems that the rivalry between Muxía and Fisterra is equivalent to the rivalry between Muxía and Camariñas regarding the use of the latter as a brand for bobbin lace. As explained in the introduction, the underlying idea that heritage is a limited good is one of the factors in this conflict and both Camariñas and Finisterre seem to consider Muxía a point of comparison and differentiation regarding branding strategies .

The importance of being put on the map is no doubt undisputed by Finisterre inhabitants. However, professionals in the tourist sector have strong opinions concerning how Finisterre tourism is promoted. Unlike Camariñas and the Costa da Morte, Finisterre lacks a general strategy to promote its name – the ‘End of the World’. Those who criticise it mimic the logic of the importance of place branding. Place branding strategies are linked to reputation: If a place has a good reputation, it might attract investors and tourists. The reputation perspective is widely employed by state agencies to create marketing strategies. Those who criticise local politicians for not having a general plan to promote Finisterre do not overlook the importance of having a good reputation. Reputation is a concept considered from an external viewpoint: ‘The place has a good reputation for the outsider’. However, for residents, it is not so much a matter of reputation, but rather of ‘pride’. Finisterre is what it is, but as a resident I can choose to be proud of it or not. A hostel keeper summarised in one sentence the relationship between a name, maps and pride: ‘We need to be on the map; our name is our pride in being Fisterrán’ (field notes, 19 July 2011).

Concluding remarks

As we explained at the beginning, the underlying idea for this article came to us while carrying out two different ethnographic fieldworks in different research contexts. Although our aims were different, we were both trying to find alternative models for heritage management. However, as we have attempted to illustrate by means of the different case studies, we came across the naturalisation of a heritage regime and the reproduction of propertisation and place branding logics. Our aim was to understand how the structuring logics of global capitalism infiltrate everyday practices and circumscribe local realities. Therefore, our first step was to investigate how place branding and corporate culture logics were being naturalised in places considered marginal in order to put them on the map and how the logics of global competitiveness, protection and propertisation of culture have permeated all levels of society. We found corporate culture assumptions in different social agents, from international organisations to regional governments, municipalities, artisans, waiters and local residents.

Throughout our analysis on how branding logics are being applied to places, ‘cultures’, ‘identities’, nations, landscapes, village names and so on, our main conclusion is related to the lack of non-naturalised standpoints regarding place branding. We have observed an unquestioned mode of marketing these places, as well as the naturalisation of the idea that marketing strategies are the only feasible logic and the economic panacea for those who have very little to sell but ‘culture’ (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2011: 22).

At the same time, heritage marketing may be regarded not only as an economic resource but also as a current resource for conflict, as sustained by Poria and Ashworth (2009). Regarding our case studies, we cannot consider the branding strategies uncritically because, as Silva (2013) says,

the making of heritage may give rise to two opposing impacts simultaneously – increased social cohesion and place pride, on the one hand, and envy and competition (and, thus, social atomisation), on the other hand – and residents are totally cognizant of the tension between the two. (p. 14)

In the case studies linked to the Costa da Morte place branding, the Camariñas bobbin lace trademark and Finisterre name branding, we have found that place pride, social cohesion, tourism benefits and sales improvements are expected and welcomed, but conflict and competitiveness have not been properly evaluated. One of the most obvious consequences is that protection and propertisation create exclusive rights to participate in heritage construction and to obtain some kind of benefit, both economic and symbolic (Prott and O’Keefe, 1992: 302). Branding is a form of essentialising, unifying and including part of a population under the umbrella of cultural identity and simultaneously; it is also a form of excluding those who cannot be protected under that umbrella. In this sense, what can reinforce social cohesion can also deepen inequality, social atomisation and exclusion.

In a marginal but complex context where past hostility is constantly threatening to reappear, where nationalist claims and identities are constantly being negotiated (Herzfeld, 2004: 10), an increase in envy and competition for limited resources may be another unexpected consequence of using branding strategies for ‘cultural products’. Comaroff and Comaroff (2011) sustain that cultural products do not follow standard economic rationality (p. 38). From a marketing viewpoint, ‘culture’ is seen as a scarce resource that must be protected from the threat of globalisation in order to be a competitive product. We wanted to raise the question of whether this extra hostility and competition must be understood as the only tool for political empowerment and repositioning places in a global hierarchy of value.

One last unexpected effect of branding strategies applied to ‘cultural products’ is the decline in alternative models for managing heritage. Marketing logic conditions how heritage and culture are practised and talked about – community heritage management is characterised as unrealistic and beyond economic rationality. Heritage, city names, ‘identities’ and ‘cultures’ are frequently portrayed as economic resources and ‘things’ that should be protected, possessed, promoted, commoditised and consumed. Any alternative approach, reappropriation, change, modification, subversion or participation on behalf of the so-called ‘community’ is not expected to be part of the branding logic. ¹⁶