Fishing tourism and local development in the Southwest Iberian

Resumen

The profits derived from fishing activities are fewer and fewer, with a decrease in employment,an increase in aging and a scarce generational replacement, which make difficult the viability ofthis primary activity. The creation of Fisheries Local Action Groups formed by different public andprivate actors from the fishing communities, drives initiatives that meet the objectives of theCommon Fisheries Policy, as well as an advance in the Community-Led Local Development andbottom-up approach, necessary for the active participation of the society in its own development.In this way, real processes of local development are generated, which persist over time and contribute to the establishment of the Sustainable Development Goals in fishing territories. The implementation of diversifying activities such as fishing tourism can generate economic flows thatincrease the stability of traditional fishing communities, positively affecting their local development. The objectives of this research are to analyse the current situation of the emerging fishingtourism in the southwest Iberian (Algarve and the province of Huelva), as well as to study its potential and main obstacles to its development. The methodology is mixed, consisting of interviewswith the main stakeholders and a questionnaire that analyses the local population’s perceptionsregarding the progress of this activity. The results point to: (a) the need to make changes in fishing activity in order to develop properly fishing tourism activities; (b) the limited generation ofeconomic (although not social) benefits derived from the participation of the local population infishing-tourism activities; and (c) the lack of procedures to publish this new activity among thetourist population, as well as the identification difficulties of the territories (many of them alreadyconsolidated by tourism) with fishing