Audiovisual Fiction and World Heritage Sites in Medium-Sized Spanish Cities: The Alhambra of Granada and the Royal Alcazar of Seville (1905–2023)

Abstract

This article analyses the production of audiovisual fiction as an instrument for disseminating the image of the Alhambra (Granada) and the Royal Alcazar (Seville) for tourism purposes. The methodology used was twofold: qualitative, carrying out an exhaustive bibliographic review, but also quantitative, using primary sources, through the identification of the films shot, visualization and collection of metadata of the scenes filmed. The information, previously structured, also allows a double analysis: temporal, considering five stages, and spatial, identifying and mapping more than twenty significant places within both sites. In its temporal dimension, the main conclusion refers to the different significance of cinema in the dissemination of the image of both sites: very prominent during Franco’s regime, with a profusion of foreign productions (Alhambra), while from the democratic period onwards it is the Royal Alcazar which offers a greater number of filming. In its spatial dimension, it has been verified that the 19th century formats in charge of disseminating images established a canon of places according to a certain degree of exoticism, which has been perpetuated by cinematography without significant changes.

1. Introduction

This article aims at highlighting the cinematographic imaginary created around two unique heritage sites, located in two medium-sized Andalusian cities with a long tourist tradition [1,2,3]: the Alhambra of Granada, and the Royal Alcazar of Seville (Spain).

The work presented here forms part of a line of research on urban spaces and their representation in audiovisual fiction films. In this vein, an extensive bibliography on film and urban space has been generated from different research fields, such as film studies, contemporary history, sociology, geography or architecture, addressing a wide range of topics [4]. It should be noted, though, that most of these studies are generally focused on the great metropolises of the world (New York, London, Paris, etc.), including Madrid [5,6,7,8,9] and Barcelona [10,11,12].

There are also generalist works or compendiums [13,14,15,16,17,18], which devote each chapter to a particular city, and this is where we find specific studies on small- and medium-sized cities. References to some of these cities, such as Valladolid [19], Malaga [20], Cordoba [21,22,23], Benidorm [24] or Torremolinos [25], can also be found in the Spanish bibliography.

Concerning the cities considered in this study, Seville has been the subject of several works that have analysed the presence of the city in the cinematograph from the end of the 19th century onwards, ranging from a purely descriptive to a more analytical point of view [26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33]. This bibliographical list is smaller in number, and of more recent appearance, in the case of Granada [34,35,36,37,38]. With regard to the dissemination of the tourist image of Seville in audiovisual fiction films, there are some interesting works that have been produced at the beginning of the 21st century, such as those by Hernández Ramírez; Oviedo-García et al.; Puche-Ruiz; Puche-Ruiz and Fernández; Osácar, Puche-Ruiz and Martínez; Osácar, Fraiz and Araújo [39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46].

Tourism is one of the first disciplines to perceive the potential of movies in cities, and it is currently a major indirect advertising tool. At the end of the 20th century, the first works on film tourism began to be published [47,48,49,50,51]. Throughout the 21st century, a remarkable academic output has been developed, not only from tourism experts, but also from other disciplines such as economics, marketing, geography itself and communication [52,53].

However, in recent years, new aspects have been incorporated that further increase this initial interest. Firstly, film tourism now transcends the major urban destinations, such as London, Paris, New York or Venice, and has become another tool for promoting tourism in any city. Secondly, the use of new formats in the dissemination of fictional audiovisual images, such as television series, has recently acquired considerable prominence. Finally, the media on which these images are presented have also evolved: from traditional exhibition halls and television monitors to computer screens, tablets and even mobile phones. This has led to changes in the Anglo-Saxon terminology used to refer to this tourism phenomenon, or parts of it: from the initial film-induced tourism [50,54], film tourism [55], cinematic tourism [56] or the more recent screen tourism [57].

Cities are aware that the image conveyed by audiovisual fiction is an increasingly relevant piece in the complex puzzle that makes up a city’s brand, as it qualifies and positions it in relation to other cities, as is the case of gastronomy [58]. It is logical, therefore, that destinations develop marketing strategies to promote their links with films [54,55,59], and promote actions aimed at generating tourism products and experiences [60]. These strategies show the remarkable proximity between fictional audiovisual products and institutional tourism promotion videos [61].

In the case of Spain, practically one out of every three bibliographical references on audiovisual fiction in Spanish cities analyses, directly or indirectly, film tourism [4]. These works analyse film tourism in increasingly varied dimensions: as a strategy for promoting tourism in certain cities, as a tool for disseminating iconic architecture and as the design of tourist routes based on feature films or television series. As is logical, these are contributions that deal with cities where tourist activity is relevant, such as those of Andalusia, the Valencian Community or Catalonia, to mention the most relevant ones.

Notwithstanding, the aforementioned studies deal with the incidence of cinema in Seville and Granada as a whole, so that work on specific heritage places within them is limited, with the exception of the works by Vela, and Romero and Puche-Ruiz [62,63]. Other than Seville and Granada, it is also worth mentioning another detailed study with similar objectives and methodology to the one presented here: Aertsen, Gámir and Manuel’s work on the cinematographic image of the Plaza Mayor in Madrid [64].

Thus, despite the profusion of moving images of the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar reproduced and disseminated by the film industry, there are few works exclusively devoted to them [65]. Most notably, in the case of the Alhambra, there is only the study by Arias Romero [66] and, more collaterally, the work of Del Rey [67], while in the case of the Royal Alcazar it is possible to find the analysis by Gómez, Nieto and Sánchez [68], but no academic contribution such as the one presented here.

This work is framed within the study of the creative industries that shape the imaginary of the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar, but aims at going a further step into the analysis of both sites, quantifying their cinematographic presence and their display on screen through the geolocation of the film scenes. Likewise, it also seeks to understand the relationship between the film industry and the tourist sites, which reveals long-established synergies arising from the propaganda of the institutions responsible for both (municipal corporations, trustees or Patrimonio Nacional as the body in charge of National Heritage).

In this way, an attempt is made to corroborate the construction of a double cinematographic and tourist gaze: from the city to the tourist landmark, and vice versa, feeding back into the traditional imaginary. The results point to a concentration of locations preferred by filmmakers on the basis of their magnificence and exoticism, derived from the previous imaginary created by traditional formats, as well as the existence of almost forgotten spaces with enormous potential.

The cinematographic use of these heritage sites is also evident at two key moments of their tourist history: the coproductions of the Francoist period (Alhambra), and the international productions of the democratic period (Alcazar). In both contexts, cinema has been used as an influential propaganda tool for Spanish imaginary. In the case of the Alhambra, enhancing the “exotic note” of national “difference” [69], as well as the tradition associated with Andalusian historical heritage and a certain national identity [70,71,72,73,74,75]. Concerning the Royal Alcazar, by positioning and consolidating the site as an emerging and essential tourist attraction [76]. In both cases, a questionable display of heritage authenticity [77] is shown, involving transnational impersonation of places [78]. Such an issue may affect the satisfaction of the tourist visit [51], and represents an added challenge to those derived from the management of film-induced tourism [79,80].

Moreover, both the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar conform in their respective cities a third space, clearly differentiated: the other parts of the historic centre and the rest of the city. In both cities, these are also spaces with peculiar characteristics: a high density of exceptionally precious heritage elements; an isolated enclosure delimited by walls; a nonresidential space with restrictive access controlled by local authorities; ultimately, an area essentially for tourist use, subject to a precise timetable which remains empty at night. For all of these reasons, despite their notable dimensions and their diverse architectural features with streets, squares and gardens, both the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar are more similar, in terms of planning and functionality, to a museum space than to any other urban space. It is these qualities (and conditioning factors) that also explain the peculiar characteristics of the film scenes shot in both sites.

This article is structured in four sections. The first section explains the materials used and the methodology employed. The second section traces the image of both sites before the arrival of the cinematograph by analysing 19th century painting, engraving and photography devoted to both sites. It is considered that these precinema formats established a gaze that, without notable changes, will also be adopted during the 20th and 21st centuries by audiovisual fiction films. The third section shows the main quantitative outcomes from the analysis of fiction films, with a double perspective that connects previous studies with the results obtained: on the one hand, the temporal dimension, analysing the cinematographic image of both sites during five historical periods; on the other hand, the spatial dimension, showing the most intensely filmed locations. Finally, the most outstanding findings are highlighted in the conclusions, consolidating the temporal and spatial gaze over two tourist landmarks which serve as cultural and tourist promoters in two medium-sized European cities.

2. Materials and Methods

The employed methodology mixes a qualitative and documentary approach with a quantitative one, and has been partly tested before in other publications [64,81,82]. The following steps are involved:

• Bibliographical revision regarding the representation of the image of the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar. This is an essential stage, as it allows the authors to contextualise their work in a process initiated at the end of the 18th century.
• Bibliographical revision of the tourist history of the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar, as well as an analysis of tourist promotion materials (guides and brochures) in order to emphasise the convergence between tourism and cinema perceived in both spaces.
• Compilation of feature films shot in both sites. For this purpose, documentary databases such as IMDb, Filmaffinity and the Filmoteca Española were used. The corpus is made up of 68 films shot in Granada, and 52 in Seville (Appendix A,

  Table A1. Films with sequences of La Alhambra.

  Film	Year	Director	Shooting Inside the Alhambra
  Espagne	1905	Alice Guy	Yes
  Der Tod in Sevilla	1913	Urban Gad	Unknown
  La Gitanilla	1914	Louis Feuillade	Unknown
  Christophe Colomb	1916	Gérard Bourgeois	Yes
  Sangre y Arena	1916	Vicente Blasco Ibáñez/Max André	Yes
  La España Trágica	1918	Rafael Salvador	Yes
  El Dorado	1921	Marcel L’Herbier	Yes
  Militona et Pedrucho	1922	Henri Vorins	Unknown
  Curro Vargas	1923	José Buchs	Yes
  El niño de oro	1925	José María Granada	Unknown
  Amapola	1926	José Martín	Unknown
  Raza de hidalgos	1927	Tony D’Algy	Unknown
  Los claveles de la Virgen	1929	Florián Rey	Yes
  La copla andaluza	1929	Ernesto González	Unknown
  Isabel de Solís, Reina de Granada	1931	José Buchs	Unknown
  Alhambra (El Suspiro del Moro)	1936	Antonio Graciani	Unknown
  María de la O	1939	Francisco Elías	Yes
  Forja de almas	1943	Eusebio Fernández Ardavín	Yes
  El doncel de la Reina	1944	Eusebio Fernández Ardavín	Unknown
  Serenata Española	1947	Juan de Orduña	Yes
  Alhambra	1949	Juan Vilá Vilamala	Unknown
  Cuentos de la Alhambra	1950	Florián Rey	Yes
  Debla, la virgen gitana	1951	Ramón Torrado	Yes
  Rendez-vous à Grenade	1951	Richard Pottier	Unknown
  Decameron Nights	1952	Hugo Fregonese	Yes
  La hermana San Sulpicio	1952	Luis Lucia	Yes
  Violettes Impériales	1952	Richard Pottier	Yes
  El seductor de Granada (A la buena de Dios)	1953	Lucas Demare	Yes
  ¡Todo es posible en Granada!	1954	José Luis Sáenz de Heredia	Yes
  Nuits Andalouses	1954	Maurice Cloche	Yes
  Para siempre	1955	Tito Davison	Yes
  Soledad	1957	Enrico Gras/Mario Craveri	Yes
  It started with a kiss	1958	George Marshall	No
  Taxi, roulotte et corrida	1958	André Hunebelle	Yes
  The 7th voyage of Sinbad	1958	Nathan H. Juran	Yes
  Honeymoon	1959	Michael Powell	Yes
  Scent of Mystery	1960	Jack Cardiff	Yes
  Aprendiendo a morir	1961	Pedro Lazaga	No
  Un puente sobre el tiempo	1963	José Luis Merino	No
  Gitana	1965	Joaquín Bollo Muro	No
  En Andalucía nació el amor	1966	Enrique López Eguiluz	Yes
  Cervantes	1967	Vincent Sherman	Yes
  Granada, addio!	1967	Marino Girolami	Yes
  No le busques tres pies…	1967	Pedro Lazaga	Unknown
  Rififí ad Amsterdam	1967	Sergio Grieco	Unknown
  Cuidado con las señoras	1968	Julio Buchs	No
  La esclava del paraíso	1968	José María Elorrieta	Yes
  Fortunata y Jacinta	1970	Angelino Fons	Yes
  La folie des Grandeurs	1971	Gérard Oury	Yes
  La novicia rebelde	1971	Luis Lucia	Yes
  Rocío y los detonadores	1972	Fernando García Tola	Yes
  El insólito embarazo de los Martínez	1974	Javier Aguirre	No
  The Golden Voyage of Sinbad	1974	Gordon Hessler	Yes
  El último guateque	1976	Juan José Porto	No
  ¡Todo es posible en Granada!	1982	Rafael Romero Marchent	Yes
  El último guateque II	1987	Juan José Porto	No
  El Lute II: Mañana seré libre	1988	Vicente Aranda	No
  Días contados	1994	Imanol Uribe	No
  Dos hombres y una mujer	1994	Juan José Porto	Unknown
  La hermana	1994	Juan José Porto	No
  The disappearance of García Lorca	1996	Marcos Zurinaga	No
  Alice et Martin	1998	André Téchiné	Yes
  Gitano	2000	Manuel Palacios	Yes
  La luz prodigiosa	2003	Miguel Hermoso	No
  Assassin’s Creed	2016	Justin Kurzel	Yes
  Tadeo Jones 2: El secreto del Rey Midas	2017	Enrique Gato/David Alonso	Yes
  Granada nights	2021	Abid Kahn	No

  and

  Table A2. Films with sequences of the Royal Alcazar.

  Film	Year	Director	Shooting Inside the Alcazar
  Le coffret de Tolède	1914	Louis Feuillade	Yes
  Les fiancés de Séville	1914	Louis Feuillade	Yes
  Sangre y Arena	1916	Vicente Blasco Ibáñez/Max André	Yes
  Christophe Colomb	1916	Gérard Bourgeois	Yes
  La terre des taureaux	1923	Jeanne Roques	No
  Currito de la Cruz	1926	Alejandro Pérez Lugín	Yes
  El embrujo de Sevilla	1930	Benito Perojo	Unknown
  Adieu les beaux jours	1933	André Beucler/Johannes Meyer	Unknown
  Currito de la Cruz	1936	Fernando Delgado	Unknown
  La Reina Mora	1937	Eusebio Fernández Ardavín	Yes
  Suspiros de España	1938	Benito Perojo	No
  María de la O	1939	Francisco Elías	No
  Tierra y Cielo	1941	Eusebio Fernández Ardavín	Yes
  La Blanca Paloma	1942	Claudio de la Torre	Yes
  El frente de los suspiros	1942	Juan de Orduña	Yes
  Olé, torero	1948	Benito Perojo	No
  Jalisco canta en Sevilla	1949	Fernando de Fuentes	No
  Una cubana en España	1951	Luis Bayón Herrera	Yes
  La hermana San Sulpicio	1952	Luis Lucia	Yes
  Châteaux en Espagne	1954	René Wheeler	No
  Nuits Andalouses	1954	Maurice Cloche	No
  Suspiros de Triana	1955	Ramón Torrado	No
  ¿Dónde vas, Alfonso XII?	1959	Luis César Amadori	Yes
  La femme et le pantin	1959	Julien Duvivier	Yes
  Bajo el cielo andaluz	1960	Arturo Ruiz Castillo	No
  Feria en Sevilla	1962	Ana Mariscal	No
  Lawrence of Arabia	1962	David Lean	Yes
  Camino del Rocío	1966	Rafael Gil	No
  En Andalucía nació el amor	1966	Enrique López Eguiluz	No
  La novicia rebelde	1971	Luis Lucia	No
  The Wind and the Lion	1975	John Milius	Yes
  Cet obscur objet du désir	1978	Luis Buñuel	No
  Reds	1981	Warren Beatty	Yes
  Los alegres bribones	1982	Pancho Bautista	No
  Carmen	1984	Francesco Rosi	Yes
  Bolero	1984	John Derek	Yes
  ‘Non’ ou A Vã Glória de Mandar	1990	Manoel de Oliveira	Yes
  Ispanskaya aktrisa dlya russkogo ministra	1990	Sebastián Alarcón	No
  1492: The conquest of Paradise	1992	Ridley Scott	Yes
  Nadie conoce a nadie	1999	Mateo Gil	No
  El caballero Don Quijote	2002	Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón	Yes
  Carmen	2003	Vicente Aranda	No
  Kingdom of Heaven	2005	Ridley Scott	Yes
  Olè	2006	Carlo Vanzina	No
  The limits of control	2009	Jim Jarmusch	No
  Appelsinpiken	2009	Eva Dahr	Yes
  Knight and Day	2010	James Mangold	No
  Ispansi!	2011	Carlos Iglesias	Yes
  Blancanieves	2013	Pablo Berger	No
  Ocho apellidos catalanes	2015	Emilio Martínez-Lázaro	No
  Life itself	2018	Dan Fogelman	No
  Una vez más	2019	Guillermo Rojas	No

  ). Documentaries and television series are excluded.
• Integration of the main parameters of these films in a database (director, year of release, nationality of the production).
• Film viewing and identification of scenes (hereafter referred to as clips). Creation of a clips file for each film.
• Clips classification into spatial categories: (a) credit titles, indoor shots or other city shots; (b) city shots without showing the site; (c) site shots; and (d) shots from viewpoints showing the exterior of the site (Alhambra), or shots from the site revealing other heritage elements (Royal Alcazar).
• Quantification of clips duration (in seconds).
• Geolocation of clips type (c) and (d). Use of decimal coordinates for georeferencing, which allows subsequent preparation of cartographies for both sites.

3. The Image of the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar during the 19th Century: Painting, Engraving and Photography, Precursors of Audiovisual Fiction

The Alhambra of Granada and the Royal Alcazar of Seville have traditionally been two major tourist attractions in their cities, although the Romanticism projection of the former, used as a metonymy for the Hispano-Arabic past of Andalusia, has eclipsed the Alcazar significance in the minds of international tourists. Suffice it to point out, in this respect, the unbalanced descriptions of the two sites in travel books, engravings, photographs, paintings and cinematography. Fiction films shot in the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar are only the penultimate link in a long succession of images of both sites derived from different formats.

In the 19th century, Andalusian cities, particularly Seville and Granada, were seen as a prelude to the Middle East journey. In this context, several painters in the course of the century were interested in both the Royal Alcazar and the Alhambra [83]. Romantic painting (Figure 1) and, later, photography show Spain uniqueness and its differential elements, in terms of architecture and culture, with respect to other European countries.

With regard to the Alhambra, Romantic painters such as François Antonine Bossuet are remarkable for their historicist view of the site, transporting the viewer to the idealised setting of an Arab city, as in Porte de Justice (1833) or in Personajes árabes en un patio andaluz (1872). This is also the case of British painters such as Henry Stainer, John Frederick Lewis and George Apperley, who on several occasions reproduced the image of the Alhambra from his Albaicín studio. Among Central European painters, the works of Eugene Delacroix and Léon Auguste Asselineau stand out, with paintings such as La cour de Alberca à l’Alhambra, Grenade (1853) showing an image of the Patio de los Arrayanes (Court of Myrtles). There are also works by North American painters such as Samuel Colman, who travelled in Europe and stopped in Granada, producing canvases such as The Hill of the Alhambra (1870). Edouard Gerhart, in turn, drew both Alcázar de Sevilla. Patio de las Doncellas. Duques de Montpensier e Infantita Isabel (1849) and Der Löwenhof der Alhambra (1861).

In the context of Spanish painting, it is the well-known Francisco Pardilla’s La rendición de Granada (1882), a Spanish Senate’s commission for a canvas frequently reproduced in history textbooks, and which today returns to the spectator through the television series “Isabel”. In a completely different style, Joaquín Sorolla’s works portraying a variety of scenes from both the Alhambra (El jardín de los Adarves, Alhambra de Granada (1910), El patio de Comares, la Alhambra de Granada (1917)) and the gardens of the Royal Alcazar, which the painter produced during his visits to the city in 1908, 1910 and 1918, are particularly noteworthy [84]. José de Larrocha (1850–1933), a painter from Granada, also devoted a large part of his motifs to the Alhambra and its environs, as did Mariano Fortuny and Santiago Rusiñol.

The Royal Alcazar, meanwhile, was mainly the subject of the Spanish painters’ gaze, such as José Domínguez Bécquer (curator of the monument during Isabel II period), who in his canvas Damas y caballeros visitando un patio del Alcázar de Sevilla (1857) depicts the well-to-do bourgeoisie of the day admiring the Dolls Courtyard. Raimundo Madrazo y Garreta took advantage of his trip to Seville in 1868 to compose his Estanque en los Jardines del Alcázar de Sevilla (Mercury Pond) and El Pabellón de Carlos V (Carlos V Pavilion) en los Jardines del Alcázar de Sevilla, a scene set in the 18th century on what was to be the first cinematographic location of the site in 1898. Manuel Wssel de Guimbarda, a Cuban painter, left us the Escena costumbrista en el Alcázar de Sevilla (1872), which recreates the atmosphere of the Maidens Courtyard populated by dancers and bullfighters. José Montenegro Capell, a genre painter from Jerez whose work oscillates between his native town and Seville, designed a whole series of canvases devoted to the Mudejar Palace of King Don Pedro (Patio del Alcázar, 1906), while Manuel García Rodríguez focused on the Garden of the Marquis de la Vega-Inclán, created at the beginning of the 20th century, and the Puerta de Marchena (c. 1920–1925).

Among the foreign painters interested in the Alcazar in Seville were the French orientalist Alfred Dehodencq, who in 1851 painted Une danse gitane dans le jardins de L’Alcazar in front of the Carlos V Pavilion, and Virgilio Mattoni, who expressed his fascination through a series of historical paintings set in the Sevillian palace (Las postrimerías de Fernando III el Santo, 1887; [85]).

As for drawing and engraving, it is important to emphasise that from the early 19th century, both the Royal Alcazar and the Alhambra were reproduced by Isidore-Justin Taylor, Alexandre de Laborde (Figure 2), Richard and Harriet Ford, Girault de Prangey, Chapuy and Asselineau, Francisco Javier Parcerisa, Genaro Pérez Villaamil or David Roberts.

In the context of the industrial revolution and the new inventions associated with it, photography emerged—initially in the form of daguerreotypes and calotypes—and, at the end of the century, cinema. The main difference with previous formats lies in the possibilities of reproduction and copying (not in the case of the daguerreotype) and, above all, in the capacity for dissemination to a public which, whether due to cultural or economic difficulties, or both, did not have access to the aforementioned paintings or engravings. First photography, and then cinema, democratised the enjoyment of images of exotic spaces and landscapes, previously limited to a minority.

Photography joined in this aim of first discovering and then popularising the architectural heritage of the Royal Alcazar and the Alhambra [86]. Needless to say, the first photographers, daguerreotypists, transferred to the new format images previously recreated by painters. Nevertheless, as the 19th century progressed, there was less a replacement of preindustrial techniques—drawing, engraving and painting—by others born of industrialisation—photography and, later, the cinematograph—than a mutual reinforcement. The camera became a complement to drawing. It is estimated that between 1849 and 1860, half a hundred photographers travelled around Spain and Portugal.

Javier Piñar Samos has quantified 843 works dedicated to the Alhambra, between daguerreotypes, positives on paper, stereoscopic plates and positives on glass, the authorship of which is attributed to photographers of recognised prestige, although he points out that the figure could be close to two thousand works if local photographers were included [65]. This production, which is undoubtedly a clear demonstration of the interest demanded by the Granada site, developed over the last two thirds of the 19th century.

The first daguerreotypes were made by Edmond François Jomard, a cartographer, engineer and archaeologist, sent from Paris by Nöel Lerebours as part of the well-known “Excursions Daguerriennes, représentant les vues et les monuments le plus remarquables du globe”. Yáñez Polo states, however, that Vicente Mamerto Casajús was the first daguerreotypist in the history of Seville, who in the early 1840s made a series of views of the main monuments of Seville, including the Alcazar [87]. In any case, Jomard’s stay in Seville and Granada in 1840 resulted in daguerreotypes whose originals have been lost, although not the engravings, retouching and reinterpreting of the original image through the eyes of the engraver (Figure 3). Lerebours’ work consisted of 111 fascicles whose pages included images of the Maidens Courtyard in the Alcazar of Seville (1841), the Court of the Lions in the Alhambra and a View of the Albaicín from the Granada monument.

Edmond François Jomard was followed by other pioneers of photography such as Francisco de Leygonier y Haubert—who produced an album of calotypes of the city of Seville, including a view of the Maidens Courtyard around 1852—Théophile Gautier, Eugène Piot, Alexandre Dumas, Couturier and William Boine.

Following the mid-19th century and using more advanced techniques, several photographs (calotypes, photoglyphic engravings) by Edward and Louisa Tenison and Jakob Auguste Lorent are reported. All of them focused, almost exclusively, on the Nasrid palaces. The former also went into the Royal Alcazar in 1853 (showing the Maidens Courtyard and the façade of the Mudéjar Palace of King Don Pedro), as did Gustave de Beaucorps (c. 1858), Soulier and Clouzard or William Henry Fox Talbot (c. 1858), while Louis de Leclercq focused his work on the gardens (c. 1859–1860). Some of these photographs served as models for Gustave Doré’s drawings and engravings, which had a considerable influence abroad.

Thus, instead of witnessing a succession of different formats in the distribution of images, a complementarity of efforts is observed, aimed at facilitating the propagation of these images across the British, French or German consumer markets.

At any rate, if the previous period can be described as one of photographic discovery based on private initiative, the second half of the 19th century is characterised by a substantial increase in the number of photographs and an undisguised intention to commodify them, turning the photographic image of the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar into a form of merchandise suitable for the cultural consumption of European elites. The French stereoscopists who toured the Andalusian cities (Ernest Lamy, Ferrier, Gaudin, Jean Andrieu) [88] took part in this enterprise, as well as renowned photographers such as Charles Clifford, Alphonse de Launay, Robert Peter Napper, Louis Léon Masson and Jean Laurent. Less well known, perhaps, are the albumen prints and photographs of the Royal Alcazar taken by Frank Charteris (c. 1860), Casiano Alguacil (c. 1866), Stuart (c. 1875) and Francis Firth (c. 1884). All of them focus on the Mudejar palace and gardens, with the exception of Charteris’s, which offers a unique view of the Cathedral from the Alcazar. In a way, these early contributions are a guide to the filmmaker as to which places deserve greater attention, as opposed to others that went more unnoticed in painting and photography.

Thus, cinema can be seen as a format that propagates an established imaginary, but with an inherent potential to readjust the original perspectives and offer them to the tourist industry, by filming recreations and new spaces that are incorporated into its narrative peculiarities. The convergence of both industries can be seen in the promotion of tourist spaces as privileged filming locations. As Butler [89] (p. 51) points out, people choose their tourist destination depending on what they have seen via popular audiovisual means, such as television and cinema, and the author suggests that because people now read less frequently, anything appearing in films and television penetrates society more easily. This capacity for confluence has proven particularly fruitful in the case of Anglo-Saxon heritage [70,71,72,76]. In this case, it has created recognisable tourist postcards such as the panoramic views of the Alhambra from the viewpoints of the Albaicín, or the framing of the Giralda under the arches of the Patio de Banderas.

4. Audiovisual Fiction in the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar: Results and Discussion

4.1. Evolution of Filming at the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar

In order to analyse the explanatory circumstances relating to more than a century of film production, it has been considered relevant to delimit five historical periods with a comparable duration: from the first documented production until the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, in 1936; the period corresponding to the war, postwar and early Francoism (1936–1954); the period of political openness after the Madrid Pacts and late-Francoism (1955–1975); the period in which the transition to democracy took place (1976–2000); and, finally, the years coinciding with the 21st century (2001–2023).

Figure 4 shows, for each of these five periods, the number of seconds with exterior scenes shot in the cities of Granada and Seville (grouped columns), as well as the number of seconds in which the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar appear (lines), based on the aforementioned sampling of films. As can be seen, while the appearance of the city of Seville has followed an ever-increasing trend, that of Granada has experienced fluctuations. Concerning the presence of the monuments in the films, it is important to note that, although filming in the Alhambra predominated during the first three periods, and even far exceeded the filming in other locations in the city of Granada during the 1955–1976 period, from that time onwards, Seville and its Alcazar became progressively more important. At any rate, even though the Royal Alcazar is regularly depicted in fiction films, such scenes are much more limited compared with those of the Nasrid palaces in Granada.

4.1.1. Pre-Civil War Cinematography (1905–1936)

This period starts with the creation of the first Spanish tourism board (the Tourism Commission, 1905), which in 1911 is replaced by the Comisaría Regia de Turismo (Royal Commission for Tourism), a highly personalist entity whose head, Benigno de la Vega-Inclán, commences to lay the foundations of modern tourism and touristic Seville. During this time, the Royal Commissioner planned the shaping and improvement of the Santa Cruz Quarter, the old Jewish district (1912–1920), whose future was threatened by certain projects of the city council, eager to open large European-style thoroughfares. Indeed, it was this pioneer who convinced King Alfonso XIII to donate the Royal Alcazar Retreat Garden to the city (now Murillo Gardens) and connect the Santa Cruz Quarter with the new urban developments of the city in the early 1910s, configuring it as a “garden-city” in the lead-up to the future Ibero-American Exhibition. The Royal Commissioner designed the Santa Cruz Quarter (Calle del Agua and Calle Judería) on the basis of what would later be considered the Andalusian architectural canon (whitewashed houses, balconies full of ivy and flowers, stylised elements reused to give atmosphere and authenticity to streets and squares) and inaugurated the Residence of America and the first Hosterias, decorated with historicist elements, which benefited from their charming roof terraces overlooking the gardens of the Alcazar [90].

The conservation and restoration of the Alhambra (declared a national monument in 1870) was the subject of heated debate within the Royal Commission during this period. In 1905 a special conservation commission was appointed, while in 1913 the Alhambra Council of Friends was created, naming the Royal Commissioner a member. This board of trustees would inspect the restoration work requested to the conservation commission and, after realising the questionable restoration that architect Cendoya had undertaken on the monument [91] ], a merge was decided between this controversial entity [92] and the Council. It should be borne in mind that at that time, “restoration” was synonymous with “remaking” heritage [93], as it had been throughout the 19th century. In 1914, by contrast, the Royal Commissioner had promoted restoration in the Patio del Yeso (Plaster Palace) of the Royal Alcazar, following novel techniques which stood for not adding a single bit of poetry to the bare monument. Vega-Inclán advocated for putting these theories into practice and also applying them to the conservation of the Alhambra, starting with the Patio of the Harem, then in a state of ruin. In 1917, the General Conservation Scheme for the monument was drawn up. From 1923 onwards, Leopoldo Torres Balbás was in charge of the works until the outbreak of the Civil War, shaping the Alhambra as we know it today [94].

It should be remembered that the Spanish Royal House owned the Alcazar of Seville until April 1931, when it was transferred to the City Council by the Government of the Second Republic, which declared it a “Historic-Artistic Monument belonging to the National Artistic Treasure”. In this regard, the monument’s curator during the period 2011–2015, Jacinto Pérez-Elliott, stated that the Alcazar’s strictly tourist history was rather a short one. Although the cession was received with jubilation by the crowds, who for the first time would be able to access the former royal quarters, according to Alfonso Lasso de la Vega [95], it was considered that its maintenance would be an onerous expense for the city council, which then considered “[....] the sale of plants and souvenirs, the installation of a nursery in the gardens” [96] (p. 157), as well as the creation of two museums (the Romantic Museum in the Apeadero area, and the Arab Museum in the Patio del Yeso). In this vein, a guide to the Upper Royal Quarters (the former Royal Residence) was hastily published in English and French by the aforementioned Lasso de la Vega, the first modern director and curator of the monument, whose language deficiencies were compensated for by the timeliness of the publication (Cabeza Méndez recalls that “[a]t the handover ceremony, Minister Martínez Barrios stated that ‘[w]hen the City Council of Seville [...], owner of the Alcazar, exhibits it to foreigners, it must remember that its greatness is linked to the past and the history of a people’” [96] (p. 156). Without the material means to finance the restoration of the monument, the council boasts an innovative heritage management that aims, above all, to open the monument to the people’. [...] they propose to create permanent exhibitions, concerts, commemorations and to promote tourism in the city, transforming a traditionally ignored monument into a centre capable of playing a leading role and energising the cultural life of Seville’ [96] (p. 158). However, the management of the monument would become a political instrument of the municipal authorities, hindering rather than encouraging such innovative initiatives.).

During these years, the first foreign film operators made their appearance in Spain, offering moving images of the world’s main destinations to a fairground public [97] However, from the second decade of the 20th century onwards, fiction triumphed and cinema was dignified by new plots and new bourgeois and aristocratic audiences: it became the main entertainment for an increasingly globalised and cosmopolitan urban public, with access to both the new art and tourist activity. After the fall of the Royal Commissioner, the National Tourist Board proceeded to promote tourism in Spain, with a view to the two major events of 1929: the Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville and the International Exhibition in Barcelona. During these years, the National Tourist Board developed an intense tourism promotion policy, filming a series of short documentaries on Spanish cities under the title Estampas Españolas. The Republican Tourist Board coexisted with the National Tourist Service of the Nationalist side (1938) until the end of the war.

Concerning the Alhambra (Granada), this first stage is characterised by a production of more than fifteen feature films, although several of them, such as La Gitanilla (Louis Feuillade, 1914), La España trágica (Rafael Salvador, 1918), Amapola la gitana (José Martín, 1926) or Los claveles de la Virgen (Florián Rey, 1928) are considered lost or have only a few shots or frames preserved (thus, in the case of Los claveles de la Virgen we only have a photonovelisation showing the protagonists in the Court of the Lions, but we do not have the complete feature film). However, five films are of outstanding importance. They are Espagne (Alice Guy, 1905), one of the first films shot in Spain, which admittedly includes scenes in the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar. A decade later, Christophe Colomb (Gérard Bourgeois, 1916) and Sangre y arena (Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and Max André, 1916) both featured scenes shot in the two locations. In the 1920s, it is worth mentioning El Dorado (Marcel L’Herbier, 1921) (Figure 5) and Curro Vargas (José Buchs, 1923). The former constitutes an important inflection, as it features numerous scenes inside the Alhambra—whose total length (18:54 min) makes it the longest film in which the monument appears—including some surrealist compositions. Additionally, some of the city’s new landmarks, with neo-Nasrid architectural features and romantic evocations, also take the spotlight, such as the Alhambra Palace Hotel, opened in the previous decade, which was the first Palace Hotel in Spain (inaugurated in 1910 by King Alfonso XIII and remodelled several times throughout its history, the hotel soon became an object of interest for the film industry, being first transferred to the screen in Sangre y arena (1916). In a way, this luxury hotel formed part of the strategy, widely-developed during the late Franco era, of promoting the resort as a tourist attraction via cinema, as well as a privileged accommodation for the film stars who took part in these productions or visited the city. Its unique location—very close to the entrance to the monument—and, above all, its neo-Nasrid architecture with abundant mosaics and muqarnas, has on numerous occasions attracted film shootings. Interior scenes—shot in the lobby, rooms and terrace—were featured in Honeymoon and, in the 1990s, in Días contados, as well as exterior scenes, showing the arrival of the main characters in feature films such as Aprendiendo a morir or the 1982 version of ¡Todo es posible en Granada! Like the Alhambra, the architectural style of the building favours the filming inside it with the aim of supplanting luxury hotels scattered throughout the Arab world, as in the French production Échappement Libre (Jean Becker, 1964), in which it represents a luxury hotel establishment in Beirut.).

If we focus on Seville, there are nine films with images of the Royal Alcazar (Seville), which account for 23.6% of the exteriors shot in the city. Le coffret de Tolède and Les fiancés de Séville (Louis Feuillade, 1914), as well as Sangre y arena and Christophe Colomb are the first fiction productions filmed in the Alcazar, showing both the Maidens Courtyard and the beauty of its gardens, and focusing on the Carlos V Pavilion, which had been the privileged setting for Alexandre Promio’s Danses Espagnoles (1898).

It is remarkable the fact that the Royal Alcazar palaces are used as film sets, appearing as everyday spaces for the local characters in Les fiancés de Séville. Meanwhile, Christophe Colomb uses the Maidens Courtyard to supplant a Barcelona location. Blasco Ibáñez’s film, in turn, establishes the basis for one of the most frequently repeated views later on: the Giralda framed by the arch overlooking the Calle Judería, in Sangre y Arena. Until then, general views of the Giralda had been taken, preferably, from the Orange Trees Courtyard, the Plaza del Triunfo or the Calle Mateos Gago. Later productions such as Currito de la Cruz (Alejandro Pérez Lugín, 1926), self-described as an authentic national production “without españoladas” (“Action, show or play that exaggerates certain features that are considered to be Spanish” (RAE), stereotypical work), would, however, replicate this idyllic image to promote the Ibero-American Exhibition (1929).

4.1.2. Postwar and Early Francoism (1937–1954)

This is the darkest moment of the Franco regime’s international isolation [98,99]. In 1939, the General Directorate of Tourism was created which, with more motivation than means [100], invested heavily in tourism promotion as a preliminary step to the diplomatic offensive that would lead to Spain’s recognition in the main international organisations at the end of the decade [101]. A culture of tourist service then became something of a patriotic duty, encouraged by the sector’s publications and promoted by the Federación Española de Sindicatos de Iniciativa y Turismo (Spanish Federation of Initiative and Tourism Unions) [102]. A timid openness, however, based on the so-called “Madrid pacts”, did not begin until 1953. As Pack states [103,104], it was at this time, and also under the Ministry of Information and Tourism (1951), that tourist activity took a “great quantitative leap” in terms of incoming visitors, an event that was also reflected in movies and, specifically, in the coproduced “españolada” of the 1950s.

According to one of the first pamphlets dealing with the advantages of using film as a tool for tourism promotion: “One of the most important aims of cinema is to make nations get to know each other in the best and most accurate terms [...]. Countries know very little about other nations and it is crucial that this ignorance ceases if the world is to progress in an equitable and positive way. And there is nothing more effective to fulfil this great duty than using cinema in an interesting and enjoyable way” [105] (p. 9). The Spanish “difference” is promoted, since “[a] country should not get rid of its singularities. On the contrary, they must project, inwards and outwards, the facets of their originality” [105] (p. 12). Thus, little by little, the film authorities began to see “co-production [...] as the most efficient way of making more expensive films and of introducing Spanish cinema in foreign markets” [106] (p. 68), as well as a system to internationalise Spanish uniqueness.

After the outbreak of the Civil War, Leopoldo Torres Balbás was dismissed by military order as the Alhambra’s curatorial architect and replaced by Francisco Prieto Moreno (1936–1977), who nevertheless continued the work of his predecessor. From 1940 (Law of 7 March “restoring the heritage sites of the former Crown Heritage to the fullness of their traditional significance”), the Royal Alcazar was managed by Patrimonio Nacional, which continued to own the “urban estates of Seville” (the orchards and houses in the Patio de Banderas). Joaquín Romero Murube was curator of the Sevillian monument during the period 1937–1969, assisted by the architect Juan Talavera and, later, by Antonio Delgado Roig [107]. Talavera had undertaken, still under Republican rule, several interventions in the Lion Courtyard and, most importantly, the restoration of the façade of the Palace of King Don Pedro, whose works were prolonged during the Civil War, with interruptions and delays [108]. It should be noted that, although the restoration of the latter was performed according to modern criteria, the Lion Courtyard underwent a regionalist transformation.

From the outbreak of the Civil War to the timid openness of Franco’s regime, several films were shot with the Alhambra as a protagonist. Their scripts focused on local costumbrism and folklore, as in María de la O (Francisco Elías, 1939) or Debla la virgen gitana (Ramón Torrado, 1951); national Catholicism in the case of Forjas de Almas (Eusebio Fernández Ardavín, 1943) and La hermana San Sulpicio (Luis Lucia, 1952); literary and historical events in Cuentos de la Alhambra (Florián Rey, 1950) and Violettes Impériales (Richard Pottier, 1952; Figure 6a)). From the early 1950s, they also aimed to consolidate a dramatic line, already begun with El Dorado, based on stories of romantic content that would become one of the hallmarks of the image of the Alhambra, transmitted by international films such as El seductor de Granada (Lucas Demare, 1953), Nuits Andalouses (Maurice Cloche, 1954) and the first version of ¡Todo es posible en Granada! (José Luis Saénz de Heredia, 1954). The total amount of footage increased with respect to the previous period, reaching 4782 s shot on Granada city exteriors—essentially condensed in the Albaicín and Sacromonte neighbourhoods—and 2653 s in interiors of the Alhambra, so that the weight of the latter area with respect to the total number of exterior scenes in the city continues to constitute a third of the total (37.5% in 1905–1936 and 35.7% in 1936–1954).

During Franco’s dictatorship, the most important works for the tourist development of the Royal Alcazar were undertaken, and a dozen film productions were shot there. Although the presence of the city on screen did not increase (from 2218 to 2103 s), the Alcazar’s appearance did slightly, representing 25.4% of the total footage shot in the city. Thus, after the shooting of international films during the 1930s which are considered lost, such as El embrujo de Sevilla (Benito Perojo, 1930) and Adieu les beaux jours (André Beucler and Johannes Meyer, 1933), a film was made in a Seville marked by the outbreak of the Civil War (La Reina Mora, Eusebio Fernández Ardavín, 1937; Figure 6b). In this film, an official tourist guide provides a tour of the city (notably comic and costumbrist) to some “English” tourists, taking particular pleasure in the gardens of the Alcazar and the recently restored façade of the Palace of King Don Pedro (the use of the tourist guide embodied in the main character of the film is a cinematographic resource used both in films shot in the Royal Alcazar and in the Alhambra. It allows the director to show both places in the same way as a guide would, who during his tour even provides historical-artistic information about each of the places and rooms; in this way, fiction and tourist propaganda are mixed in the same audiovisual product).

The Maidens Courtyard would reappear in another tourist visit, albeit of a romantic nature, in Tierra y Cielo (Eusebio Fernández Ardavín, 1941), while the gardens would be the setting for the reproaches of the protagonist couple in La Blanca Paloma (Claudio de la Torre, 1942). The panoramic view of the Giralda from the Grotto Gallery in Tierra y Cielo would be conveniently reproduced in the first coproductions with Latin America, as in Jalisco canta en Sevilla (Fernando de Fuentes, 1949) and Una cubana en España (Luis Bayón Herrera, 1951). At the same time, the exterior–interior duality of the Alcazar is offered for the first time in coproductions such as Suspiros de España (Benito Perojo, 1938), Olé, torero (Benito Perojo, 1948) and Nuits Andalouses. The palaces are also used as supplanted locations: the regionalist Lion Courtyard and even the Courtyard of the Cruise become the Sevillian convent of La hermana San Sulpicio (Luis Lucia, 1952). Moreover, the first aerial view of the Royal Alcazar in Chateaux en Espagne (René Wheeler, 1954) stands out for its singularity.

4.1.3. Openness and Late-Francoism (1955–1975)

The period from 1955 to 1975 is characterised politically by the Franco regime’s successful strategy of external aperture, comprising the integration of Spain into the group of Western countries, particularly in the military and economic spheres. We are therefore in a transitional stage, in which the autarchic and racial Spanish “difference” gives its last breaths, and tourists are still being indoctrinated about their own superb heritage. Nevertheless, a strong dichotomy is beginning to emerge between the “Andalusian synecdoche” of Spain proposed by heritage medium-sized towns (Seville, Granada, Cordoba, Ronda...), and the glorification of the Costa del Sol and its modernity (Torremolinos–Marbella axis), which focused on a homogenising “sun and beach” product. In this way, the tourist was symbolically placed on a towel on the shore of a confusing tourist destination, consisting of fragments of folklore, preferably Andalusian, so that the visitor did not care whether he or she visited the Levantine, insular or Andalusian coast.

Cinema also plays a decisive role in this strategy by contributing to the dissemination and promotion of Spanish landscapes and heritage sites. Thus, a film subgenre arose, breathing new life into “Spanishness” via the popular films which portrayed female Swedish characters on the beach or by the swimming pool. This film subgenre moved the epicentre of the Spanish synecdoche from Seville to the Costa del Sol, and was the latest twist on a century-old genre (the “españolada”). This so-called “landismo genre” (named after Spanish actor Alfredo Landa) fiddled with the comparison between the progress of European citizens and the attempts of Spain to modernise the country through Franco’s Development Plans, which “clashed” with secular (and racial) “difference”. Thus, film production—both national and foreign—accompanied the strategy of promoting the tourist areas and the Andalusian coastline, concentrating the greatest number of film shootings at the Costa del Sol [109]. Despite their geographical location in the interior of Andalusia, both the Royal Alcazar in Seville and the Alhambra in Granada also attracted the attention of film producers due to their architectural uniqueness.

In the second half of the 1950s, the Granada International Music and Dance Festival (begun in 1952) took shape and gained fame. In 1957, work was completed on the Palace of Charles V, which became the Museum of the Alhambra and Fine Arts of Granada. As for the Royal Alcazar, Cabeza Méndez states that during the dictatorship “the original walls in their northern sector were freed of the terraced houses, creating a new urban thoroughfare” [96] (p. 158), specifically, the actual Calle Joaquín Romero Murube and its monumental walls. The walls, the result of an Almohad intervention during the 12th or 13th centuries, are considered to be the most vulnerable of those existing in the city of Seville, due both to their location and to the variety of spaces and uses they house [110].

During these years, Patrimonio Nacional published guides devoted to the Royal Sites, and a succession of editions of the guide dedicated to the Alcazar of Seville was issued, with texts by the Alcazar’s own curator, Joaquín Romero Murube, who was in charge of the regeneration of the gardens. In the 1970s, the area of the Courtyard of the Assistant and the Levíes Courtyard was rebuilt, while at the same time “[...] important tasks were carried out in the conservation of the palaces, such as the renovation of part of the roofs of the Mudejar palace and the remodelling of its upper floor, the restoration of the Tapestry Room and the rehabilitation of the Sun Room” [96] (p. 158).

More than twenty productions with scenes in the Alhambra have been identified. These films continue some of the aforementioned plot lines: costumbrist and romantic stories, such as Honeymoon (Michael Powell, 1959), and narratives based on historical facts or novels. However, there are several new aspects to be mentioned concerning this period. Firstly, the total number of feature films doubles with respect to the previous one, with foreign productions or coproductions appearing prominently, whether American, such as It started with a Kiss (George Marshall, 1958), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (Keneth Kolb, 1958), British in the case of Scent of Mystery (Jack Cardiff, 1960) and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (Gordon Hessler, 1974), French, such as Taxi, roulotte et corrida (André Hunebelle, 1958), La folie des Grandeurs (Gérard Oury, 1971; Figure 7a.) or even Italian (Granada addio!, Mario Girolami, 1967). These productions will act as an outstanding vehicle for disseminating the image—now in colour—of the Alhambra abroad.

Secondly, these are films in which Granada shares the limelight with other Spanish cities—especially Andalusian ones. This would explain the significant decline in the total volume of exteriors shot in Granada. Finally, it is worth highlighting the importance of the Alhambra in these films, since it accounts for 63.1% of the locations shot in the city. Figure 4 shows how, of the five periods analysed, it is precisely the late-Francoist period, the only one in which the volume of films showing the Alhambra—either from inside or from the viewpoints—far exceeds the rest of the scenes filmed in exteriors of the city. There are around twenty feature films—some of them widely distributed outside Spain—which contain brief scenes of Granada in which the Alhambra takes on an evident protagonism, on most occasions representing itself, on others supplanting cities of the Arab world, such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Cervantes or The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. No doubt this would not have been possible without the cooperation of the authorities governing access to and use of the site.

During the developmentalist period, the Royal Alcazar of Seville is only used by ten film productions, but their presence on screen doubles with respect to the previous period, reaching 1763 min (24.8% of the total exterior shots of the city). As in the case of the Alhambra, the Royal Alcazar is also the object of impersonation of places: Damascus in Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962) or Fez in The wind and the lion (John Milius, 1975). Additionally, these films demonstrate the effective combination of filming in the Royal Alcazar and the Casa de Pilatos (or Plaza de España).

National productions, by contrast, choose to show the Alcazar from the outside, as in Suspiros de Triana (Ramón Torrado, 1955), Camino del Rocío (Rafael Gil, 1966) or La novicia rebelde (Luis Lucia, 1972). The Royal Alcazar’s Almohad walls, recently recovered, appear prominently in films such as Bajo el cielo andaluz (Arturo Ruiz Castillo, 1962) or En Andalucía nació el amor (Enrique López Eguiluz, 1966; Figure 7b)), the latter film sharing filming with the Alhambra. La femme et le pantin (Julien Duvivier, 1959), meanwhile, places the spectator in an area that had only been shown in María de la O: the walls of the Callejón del Agua and the Murillo Gardens (Plaza Alfaro), which will also be displayed in Feria en Sevilla (Ana Mariscal, 1962). The French film, which starred Brigitte Bardot, returns to the Alcazar gardens as the perfect setting for a tourist visit. Only one Spanish production would venture into the Royal Alcazar’s palaces, and even, for the first time, into the Upper Royal Quarters, as the setting for the duel between queens in ¿Dónde vas, Alfonso XII? (Luis César Amadori, 1959).

4.1.4. Spanish Political Transition and the Early Years of Democracy (1976–1999)

The period in question will be one of “[...] spectacular growth in absolute [tourism] figures, moderation of growth rates and, above all, cyclical behaviour of income and especially of visitors” [98] (p. 214). Thus, the first years of the period, which coincided globally with the oil crisis and at the state level with the Spanish transition to democracy, were characterised by a continuist tourism policy, incapable of responding to the new environmental demands, or of adapting to the restrictions on powers dictated by the new Spanish Constitution. This attitude finally resulted in the relaxation of centralist interventionism (disappearance of the Ministry of Information and Tourism in 1977), if not in a de facto abandonment of functions [111]. It is not surprising, therefore, that many authors describe state tourism policy at this point as “erratic”, given that, “[...] like other sectoral policies [...], it was left behind due to political urgencies” [112] (p. 230).

Marchena considers that throughout the 1980s, there was “[...] an incorporation or intensification of new inland areas (Granada, Seville, Cordoba: the triangle of the Andalusian Circuit) and the Atlantic coast and Almeria and Granada [into the tourist demand]” [113] (p. 366). Vallejo recalls that, at that time, “[c]ultural tourism, with a long tradition, received impetus from different fronts and with different initiatives, ranging from the local and regional to the state level. With it, urban tourism and tourism of great routes with historical references [...]” in medium-sized cities, as well as nature tourism [112] (p. 164). The national campaign “Everything under the sun” added a slight nuance (“Everything [new] under the sun”) and aimed to attract foreign tourists who had just emerged from the 1989–1991 crisis. It was nothing but a cultural revision of the previous campaign, with the banner of the great Spanish events of 1992 as a showcase for the Spanish entry into the European economic community. For Vallejo [112] (p. 161), “[t]he commemorations of that year marked a psychological turning point and self-esteem was strengthened, as was the country’s external image”. Because “it was a real challenge, an attempt to present itself to the world without complexes, as had been attempted in 1929 with the Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville and the International Exhibition in Barcelona. The 1992 events inaugurated a new scenario and a new Spain with broadened horizons” [112] (p. 165), in the context of a period of tourism crisis (1989–1991), which the same author points out.

At this time, a new age of conservation and restoration emerges, and has a decisive effect on both monuments. Specialisation of the work teams involved in the restoration of the Alhambra is evident. Organisation is at a maximum, and the work (now much more meticulous and supported by the most advanced technology) has to be combined with the regulated tourist visit [114]. Analyses of the carrying capacity of the site are carried out, [115] and it became essential to implement a ticket reservation system. In 1984 the site was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List, and a decade later the declaration was extended to include the Albaicín neighbourhood.

In Seville, in 1987, the Cathedral, the Archive of the Indies and the Royal Alcazar were jointly included in the World Heritage List. The Royal Alcazar was under the direction of Rafael Manzano Martos (1966–1988), who carried out various actions to give unity to the palace enclosure, following the initiatives of his predecessors [107]. As the oldest inhabited royal palace in Europe, the City Council reached an agreement with Patrimonio Nacional on the use of the Upper Royal Quarters by the King and Queen from 1988 onwards. A period of tourist boom for the Royal Alcazar was marked by the creation of the Patronato (Board of Trustees) of the Royal Alcazar after the 1992 Universal Exhibition. The Alcazar became an autonomous body of the City Council (1995). This allowed it both to control its budget and to finance itself through tourist visits, filming and cultural activities. In this sense, the Official Gazette of the Province of Seville published in 1997 the “Rules of use” of the site, which set a maximum capacity inside the building of 750 visitors, as well as the “conditions for the filming of films, videos and photographs on a professional basis”. It is established that “only filming of movies whose contents are compatible with the historical-artistic character of the site will be authorised”, that the collaboration of the Patronato must appear in the credits of the film, and that an extract of the script must be submitted alongside the application for approval. At present, filming fees at the Royal Alcazar are 800 EUR/hour, and the crew must hire a conservator of historical heritage with experience in filming, who will be responsible for handing over the property after filming.

From the second half of the 1970s onwards, with the exceptions of the second version of Todo es posible en Granada (Rafael Romero Marchent, 1982; (Figure 8a)), Alice et Martin (André Téchiné, 1998) and Gitano (Manuel Palacios, 2000), the number of films shot in interiors of the Alhambra dropped significantly. The criteria of preservation of the monument now clearly take precedence over a strategy to disseminate its image, one of the most obvious examples being the refusal of permission to film in the Court of the Lions a part of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989) (on the use of analytical processes for the evaluation of the columns of the Patio de los Leones, see the work of Acampa and Grasso [116]). At the same time, the prominence of the “other Granada” increased, and both Spanish and foreign directors turned their attention to the city as a filming set, as shown in El Lute, Mañana seré libre (Vicente Aranda, 1988), Días contados (Imanol Uribe, 1994) or The disappearance of García Lorca (Marcos Zurinaga, 1999), even turning its streets into a 19th century Italian city (Wilde, Brian Gilbert, 1997).

During the period 1976–1999, nine feature-length fiction films were shot in the Royal Alcazar, with a predominance of international productions. In this regard, it is worth noting that only one purely national production, Los alegres bribones (Pancho Bautista, 1982), is recorded, and that it focuses on the exterior of the monument (Lion Gate or Puerta del León). This is a period in which the appearance of the Royal Alcazar declines, while the presence of the city of Seville on screen increases, so that the Sevillian monument only represents 12.1% of the exteriors filmed in the city. Thus, in the Franco-Spanish coproductions, such as Cet obscur objet du désir (Luis Buñuel, 1978) and Franco-Italian ones, such as Carmen (Francesco Rosi, 1984), the use of the monument is rather superficial, limited to setting the misadventures of Fernando Rey in the Santa Cruz Quarter (Calle Judería, walls of Calle Romero Murube) or of Plácido Domingo on the terraces overlooking both the gardens and the Giralda. As for Nadie conoce a nadie (1999), Mateo Gil chooses the costumbrist setting designed by Vega-Inclán to present his innovative plot at the dawn of the 21st century.

The use of the palaces for impersonation of places, located outside Spanish borders, is a challenge for the management of film-induced tourism, as well as a risk for the projection of an authentic image [51,79,80]. Notwithstanding, for actor/director Warren Beatty, the Maidens Courtyard briefly became the perfect setting for a socialist republic, such as Azerbaijan in Reds (1981), while John Derek conceived the Alcazar gardens as those of an exotic luxury hotel (Bolero, John Derek, 1984). The coproductions Non, ou A Vã Glória de Mandar (Manoel de Oliveira, 1990) and 1492: The Conquest of Paradise (Ridley Scott, 1992; Figure 8b.), in turn, set their plots during the reign of the Catholic monarchs, thus favouring the scenes shot inside the monument (Hall of Ambassadors, Philip II Ceiling Room). It is worth mentioning the aerial views of the Alcazar in the atypical film Ispanskaya aktrisa dlya russkogo ministra (Sebastián Alarcón, 1990), a coproduction between the USSR and Spain, shot in the midst of the excitement of the imminent celebration of the Universal Exhibition of Seville (1992) (Figure 8).

4.1.5. 21st Century (2000–2023)

Velasco considers that, at the beginning of the 21st century, the role of the state is changing again, because the foundations for cooperation between the different administrations have been laid and the problems of coordination between the central and regional governments have been overcome, so that the state can step back and become a platform that brings together public and private tourism agents. Thus, once harmonisation in relations with the regional governments has been achieved, central policy focuses on quality and cooperation between the regions and the private sector. In this way, the author understands that “quality, as a central idea, is conceived as a working philosophy that can only be effective if leadership is assumed by the sector itself, which means promoting the protagonism of private actors and ignoring the idea of the environment or of social, environmental or cultural impacts” [117] (p. 189).

Moreover, in 1999, the first Andalusian tourism law (Law 12/1999 of 15 December) came into force. Gallardo recalls that this law “[...] establishes in its articles 19 to 21 a series of functional measures aimed at promoting and maintaining the quality image of Andalusia as a tourist destination in the markets that require it” [118] (p. 85). In 2002, the General Tourism Plan of Andalusia was approved, whose final objective is “[...] the consolidation of tourism as a key sector for the future development of Andalusia”. To this end, three intermediate objectives are articulated: improvement of competitiveness of the Andalusian tourism system, renewal of the Andalusian tourism model and improvement of the integration of tourism in Andalusian society [119] (pp. 99–100). This also reinforcing the power that branding Andalusia, as an umbrella brand, must have “to evoke all the sensations that already existed in the recipient or to install them”.

At the dawn of the new century, Andalusia was promoted as an integral tourist destination. According to Pellejero, this was “[a] novel objective that aroused certain doubts and some unfavourable opinions in the sector” [120] (p. 26), given that brands such as “Costa del Sol” or “Seville” itself carried much more weight than the global brand [121]. However, the Regional Ministry of Tourism and Sport decided to go for quality and deseasonalisation, and “remained firm in its position, arguing reasons of promotional efficiency” [120] (p. 26), by bringing together all the tourist diversity of Andalusia under this umbrella brand, and restoring the character of the region as a mythical and romantic, but modern, destination. The PGTA (General Tourism Plan in Andalusia) designs a Sustainable Tourism Strategy, with the aim of offering “unique, nonsubstitutable experiences. This Strategy would be articulated through two initiatives: Sustainable Tourism (spaces with tourist potential that might balance consolidated flows) and Tourist Cities (creation of a network of medium-sized cities and historic areas).

In 2011, half of all domestic tourists were attracted by the wide range of activities offered by cultural tourism, with Andalusia being the region with the highest income from this type of tourism, according to the National Tourist Office. For international tourists, the percentage was around 17% of the total. However, the document of the National and Integral Tourism Plan (2012–2015) admitted that what Spanish cultural tourism offers in Spain “is poorly positioned in international markets, making it essential to develop actions to boost the demand for this type of tourism in our country”[122] (p. 78). Pérez Monguió and Fernández Ramos recall how “[...] also following the pattern of other regions that had endowed themselves with a second-generation tourism law, the Andalusian Parliament finally approved Law 13/2011, of 23 December, on tourism in Andalusia, which is currently [in 2017] the main law of a renewed and thriving set of regulations” [123] (p. 6). Nevertheless, in 2021 a new General Plan for Sustainable Tourism in Andalusia would be approved (META 2027).

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the Andalusian regional government’s interest in promoting tourism at tourism fairs became evident. It is revealing how, in the case of the International Tourism Fair (FITUR), which is held every winter in Madrid, Andalusia not only has a much larger stand space than other regions, but it has also been the first to use—in a profuse manner—the images of feature films shot in the region as a hook for attracting national and international tourism. For Andalusia, 21st century is decidedly the century of the use of images from audiovisual fiction (films and series) as a fundamental tool for the promotion of its landscapes. This is highlighted by the creation of the pioneering Andalusia Film Commission and the initiative “Andalusia, a film destination”.

Concerning the two sites under study, it is known that since at least 2008 there have been detailed regulations on filming conditions in the Alhambra, which were renewed in 2013 by the Ministry of Culture of the Andalusian Regional Government. The regulations, naturally, stipulate that all ornamental and architectural elements must be respected—expressly prohibiting the use of anchorages—and that civil liability insurance must be taken out to cover the public installations. Additionally, the delivery of a summary of the plot of the film, the requirement that the Alhambra and Generalife Trust appears in the final credits, as well as providing a copy of the film for the documentation service of the Trust, which may use it for didactic or academic purposes. At present, filming fees are set at 725 EUR/hour in the areas included in the public visit itinerary, and 925 EUR/hour in the areas not included in the itinerary.

In the case of the city of Seville, a single point of contact with the Seville City Office of Media, Events and Entertainment was inaugurated after a period of crisis concerning the film office. Second only to the Alhambra and Seville Cathedral, the Alcazar becomes the third most visited monument in Spain, with an average of 1,275,000 visits per year (2013). The Patronato of the Royal Alcazar focuses during this period on the restoration and conservation of the site, undertaking important actions to enhance its value. Thus, under the direction of Cabeza Méndez (director curator of the Alcazar during the period 1990–2008), archaeological research on the monument is at its peak, confirming it as a genuine stratigraphic laboratory for learning about the different peoples who settled in Seville in ancient times.

From the beginning of the 21st century, the protagonist role of the “other Granada” has been consolidated in stories featuring former soldiers of the war in La luz prodigiosa (Miguel Hermoso, 2003), a serial killer in the feature film Caníbal (Manuel Martín Cuenca, 2013), Indian tourists in Heart Attack (Puri Jagannadh, 2014) or foreign students in Granada Nights (Abid Kahn, 2021). It is significant that in this period only 12% of the footage shot in Granada is devoted to the Alhambra, including new ways of transferring the image of the site to other audiences, as in the Spanish animated film Tadeo Jones 2: El Secreto del Rey Midas (Enrique Gato and David Alonso, 2017; (Figure 9a).). It seems as if the massification of cultural tourism, with figures in excess of three million visitors (3.3 million in 2010) makes individualised promotion of the Alhambra via film unnecessary.

The Royal Alcazar of Seville appears during this period in a dozen films, in which the presence of the city increases, but the proportion dedicated to the monument remains at levels of the beginning of the 20th century (24.4% of the total number of Seville exterior shots). In any case, this is the period with the greatest amount of footage in the monument (2,758 s). In the sampling of films, we find a significant majority of international productions and coproductions in which the image of Seville is offered through the sieve of the experiential. It is noteworthy that a good number of them, such as Carmen (Vicente Aranda, 2003), Olè (Carlo Vanzina, 2006), The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009), Knight and Day (James Mangold, 2010), Blancanieves (Pablo Berger, 2012) or Life Itself (Dan Fogelman, 2018), only show the exterior walls as a traditional space of the city (Calle Judería, Callejón del Agua, Calle Romero Murube, Patio de Banderas, Lion Gate).

Ridley Scott, meanwhile, who had delayed the decision to shoot his Kingdom of Heaven in the Alcazar, sees his art directors having to go to great lengths to hide the recently discovered mediaeval garden of the Maidens Courtyard in order to recreate Jerusalem in his 2005 film (Figure 9b). This was the most important production shot in the Alcazar until the arrival of the Game of Thrones team (2014), and highlights, once again, the traditional filming relationship between the Royal Alcazar and the House of Pilate (Olè; Knight and Day).

The sumptuous gardens also make an appearance in two unique coproductions, Appelsinpiken (Eva Dahr, 2009), in which the spectator is treated to a wonderful (and clichéd) sightseeing tour of the city, and Ispansi! (Carlos Iglesias, 2011), in which they serve as the backdrop for a crucial interview. The only Spanish production that goes into the palaces is El caballero don Quijote (Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, 2002), in which the actor Juan Luis Galiardo wanders disoriented through the upper corridors of the Dolls Courtyard. On the other hand, Spanish films such as the successful Ocho apellidos catalanes (Emilio Martínez Lázaro, 2015) or Una vez más (Guillermo Rojas, 2019) make a new halt in typical Seville (Patio de Banderas, Calle Judería, Paseo de Catalina de Ribera), as the penultimate twist of costumbrism in the early 21st century (Figure 9).

4.2. Spatial Distribution of Locations

In contrast to the previous studies mentioned in the Introduction, the methods employed in this work introduce significant novelties. The database used is built on clips rather than films, and the duration of each clip has been quantified, as well as its exact location. This laborious task enables the authors to base their argument on the quantitative analysis of the places where the films were shot, rather than on the individualised description of each of the feature films. Moreover, the quantification allows them to weigh the relevance of each to these locations, according to their duration.

The following paragraphs offer the results of the greater or lesser relevance of the different significant places that comprise the Alhambra of Granada and the Royal Alcazar of Seville.

Table 1. Locations in the Alhambra (Granada) and the Royal Alcazar (Seville) with the highest intensity of filming, expressed in minutes and seconds. Source: own elaboration.

Alhambra	Duration	Royal Alcazar	Duration
Court of the Lions	24:21	Maidens Courtyard	14:51
Partal	12:58	Hall of Ambassadors	12:55
Generalife Gardens	11:04	Philip II Ceiling Room	09:08
Yusuf III Gardens-Partal	10:06	Patio de Banderas	08:04
Comares Palace	09:52	Gothic Palace and Tapestries Hall	07:50
Gate of Justice	08:03	Grotto Gallery	04:39

shows, for both sites, the places which have attracted the most attention from feature film directors.

Within the Alhambra, the Nasrid palaces (Figure 10) are undoubtedly more attractive for filmmakers than other buildings such as the Palace of Charles V, the Church of Santa María de la Encarnación or the Convent of San Francisco (now the Parador Nacional (Paradores Nacionales are a network of almost one hundred high-category hotels with three characteristics that differentiate them from the rest of the hotel offer. Firstly, it is a state-owned company. Secondly, their location criteria are not exclusively market-driven, but are also based on the idea of territorial promotion. Finally, most of them are located in emblematic historical buildings such as castles, convents, etc.)). The Court of the Lions contains the greatest number of scenes, many of them static, given its small dimensions and the abundance of columns, which are appreciated for their cinematographic effect. These are generally scenes completed with interiors in the Hall of the Two Sisters (Honeymoon; Todo es posible en Granada; En Andalucía nació el amor; El Dorado), the Hall of the Ambassadors (Cristophe Colomb) or adjoining courtyards such as the Court of the Lindaraja (Curro Vargas) or the Mexuar Court (¡Todo es posible en Granada!, 1984), spaces largely reproduced in paintings, photographs and engravings. The iconic dimension of the Nasrid palaces is demonstrated by the fact that they have even been made into cartoons and animated films (Tadeo Jones 2: El Secreto del Rey Midas).

The Partal is notable for being a place between a garden and an open courtyard, and also for its considerable dimensions. Long scenes are frequently staged here (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad; Honeymoon; Cervantes; El Dorado) with the camera focusing on various areas, the views of which sometimes extend to other parts of the Alhambra.

Unlike the previous case, the scenes set in the Comares Palace are constrained by the walls of the courtyard and are mainly centred on the north façade, as in the long scene in Cristophe Colomb. These are also present in El Dorado, Cuentos de la Alhambra, Curro Vargas and Honeymoon.

The terraced garden with water surfaces, located in the vicinity of the Partal and the Remains of Yusuf III Palace, offers many cinematographic possibilities, as it allows the director to focus the camera either towards the Partal or towards the Palace and Generalife Gardens. It is a very recurrent space in several films, such as Violettes Impériales.

In the Generalife surroundings, the Patio de la Acequia (Court of the Main Canal) stands out, with the fountains in the courtyard, as well as the nearby gardens. This is a space which has been used in almost all romantic films such as El Dorado, in the two versions of Todo es posible en Granada, En Andalucía nació el amor or Para siempre (Tito Davison, 1955). Other nearby settings such as the Palace itself, the Patio de la Sultana (the Soultana’s Court) or the water staircase receive much less attention.

As mentioned before, the Palace of Charles V, despite its dimensions, has only a small number of scenes. Few films have been shot there, including La folie des Grandeurs (158 s) and brief fragments in the El Dorado (barely 11 s in a film which shoots almost twenty minutes outside the palace), Rocío y los detonadores (Fernando García Tola, 1972) and Alice et Martin. The former Convent of San Francisco (now the Parador) has not attracted the attention of filmmakers either, with the exception of several scenes in Nuits Andalouses.

The Alhambra area has four gates: the Gate of Justice (Bab-al-Sharia); the Gate of Seven Floors (Bab-al-Gudur); the Gate of Arms (Bab-al-Silah) and the Gate of Arrabal, at the foot of the Torre de los Picos (Tower of the Pointed Embattlements). Undoubtedly the most used for filming is the Gate of Justice (shown in several films such as El Dorado, Cuentos de la Alhambra, Debla la Virgen Gitana, Scent of Mystery), and to a much lesser extent the Gate of Wine. Filming at the Gate of Arms and the Gate of Seven Floors is rare.

The Alhambra is surrounded by a walled perimeter, in which certain towers can be highlighted. The Comares Tower is almost omnipresent in films because of its position and height. However, most notably, this tower appears in shots taken from the Albaicín, on the right bank of the Darro (¡Todo es posible en Granada!, The Disappearance of García Lorca). Because of its dimensions and position, it is also common to see its iconic profile in films that do not include scenes inside the Alhambra, such as Granada Nights. As for the Alcazaba ensemble, with the Torre de la Vela (Tower of the Candle) and the Torre de Armas (Tower of Arms), it appears in several films such as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Gitano. The Torre de los Picos has architectural characteristics (scalloped top of the tower, limited dimensions, proximity to other towers such as the Tower of the Cadí and the Captive’s Tower, access to the exterior from the Gate of Arrabal) which led to its being featured in several films. Additionally, the existence of the Gate of Arrabal allows for scenes located inside and outside the walls, as in Cuentos de la Alhambra (in this film there is an escape scene of a prisoner descending the tower façade with a rope, which today, for obvious reasons of heritage protection, would be impossible to film). Several scenes have also been set in the walled enclosure between this tower and the Tower of the Cadí or the Comares Tower, as in Rocío y los detonadores.

Furthermore, a combination of two elements must be considered in Granada: the city’s unique architectural heritage, but also the topography on which this heritage is built. The location of the Alhambra between the Genil and the Darro valleys is quite relevant. The result is a steeply sloping topography on the right bank of the river Darro, on which the Albaicín and Sacromonte neighbourhoods are located. This situation allows the Alhambra to be seen from almost any cardinal point, as it is located on a hill—similar to that of the Alcazar of Segovia—which enhances its image. However, it is also worth noting the short distance that separates the Albaicín hillside from the Alhambra without any element, be it natural or architectural, interrupting this view. Thus, the Alhambra can be seen in isolation (i.e., not showing contemporary buildings in the same image) from the north, or alongside Granada from the east, from the viewpoints of the Sacromonte Abbey and the Silla del Moro (the Moor’s Chair; Figure 11). These are conditions of location and visibility that have been exploited by painting and photography and, from the very beginning, by audiovisual production. It should be mentioned that the viewpoints are used both by films that shoot inside the Alhambra and those that do not, as in Cuidado con las señoras (Julio Buchs, 1968), El insólito embarazo de los Martínez (Javier Aguirre, 1974), El Lute, mañana seré libre, It started with a Kiss, Granada Nights, Días Contados, La hermana (Juan José Porte, 1994) and La luz prodigiosa (Miguel Hermoso, 2003). There are also films that use aerial shots to integrate Granada into the story, as in the long opening scene of Scent of Mystery.

Among these viewpoints, and considering the duration of the clips, San Nicolás Viewpoint outshines other similar ones such as San Miguel Alto, Santa Isabel la Real, Los Carvajales or the Carmen de la Victoria, as well as other viewpoints located on particular plots of land and houses. It is favoured by the same altitude (760 m) as the Alhambra as ensemble (780 m), by the dimensions of the viewpoint itself, which allows for the staging of dance scenes as in It started with a Kiss, as well as its proximity to the site (about 400 linear metres) and the easy vehicle access. As for the San Miguel Viewpoint (850 metres above sea level), it shares some characteristics with the San Nicolás Viewpoint, but is located twice as far from the Alhambra (more than 800 metres) as the previous one.

Several eastern viewpoints are located in a similar privileged position, so there may be some confusion when assigning the scenes. This is the case of the Moor’s Chair Viewpoint (840 metres above sea level), which appears in Aprendiendo a morir (Pedro Lazaga, 1961) and in Taxi, roulotte et corrida (André Hunebelle, 1958). The same is applicable to the Viewpoint of the Sacromonte Abbey (940 m above sea level and at a distance of 1500 metres from the Alhambra). Situated at a higher altitude than the previous one, from its position it is possible to observe the Albaicín neighbourhood, the rest of the old part of the city and the fertile plain of Granada with a slight turn of the camera. It is usually chosen for scenes in which travellers reach the city by car. In the interior of the city, the so-called Romantic Viewpoint and the views from the Ismail Tower (¡Todo es posible en Granada!, 1984) are also notable, and are frequently used in romantic scenes in which the interior of these buildings can be seen.

Concerning the Royal Alcazar of Seville, the analysis of its spaces reveals four distinct typologies: the interior of the patrimonial site, with the palaces (Figure 12; in red) and gardens (in green), and the exterior of the site, with a double gaze from the city towards the interior of the site (walls, in black), and from the Alcazar towards the city (views, in blue). Focusing on the first typology (palaces), the cinematographic use of the first three spaces (the Maidens Courtyard, the Hall of Ambassadors and Philip II Ceiling Room; Table 1) can be observed, being combined by the filmmakers to create a dynamic and presumably realistic setting of exotic spaces (The Wind and the Lion; 1492: The Conquest of Paradise; Kingdom of Heaven), an aspect that had already been exploited by painting, photography and engraving during the 19th century. Despite its notable presence on screen, it is worth noting that the Tapestries Hall (Gothic Palace) does not constitute a memorable space, owing its considerable screen exposure to the film Lawrence of Arabia.

Notwithstanding, it is remarkable that emblematic spaces such as the Mudejar façade of the Palace of King Don Pedro (La Reina Mora; The Wind and the Lion) or the Dolls Courtyard (The Wind and the Lion; El caballero Don Quijote; Kingdom of Heaven) are rarely featured in the films, as is the so-called Upper Room Quarters (residence of the Head of State, which only appears in ¿Dónde vas, Alfonso XII? by Luis César Amadori, 1959) or the Plaster Palace. In this sense, it should be noted that the Maidens Courtyard is the space that becomes synonymous with the palaces of the Royal Alcazar, appearing in 21.15% of the sampling. Meanwhile, the traditional relationship between the Royal Alcazar and the House of Pilate is repeated over time, starting with the filming of Lawrence of Arabia and continuing in films such as Carmen (1984), 1492: The conquest of Paradise, Kingdom of Heaven, Olè or Knight and Day.

Concerning the second typology (gardens), the Grotto Gallery is the space most frequently shown by the filmmakers, with a superior number of appearances in seconds than the Carlos V Pavilion, which, as mentioned above, was the first film location in the Royal Alcazar (Danses Espagnoles). However, in terms of number of appearances, the Pavilion is shown more frequently in films, mostly accompanied by the Lion Pavilion in the background (Les fiancés de Séville, Tierra y Cielo, La Blanca Paloma, La femme et le pantin, Ispansi!; Figure 13), thus consolidating itself as a space heir to 19th century visions. As for the Grotto Gallery, it appears both in films that use the gardens as a traditional space (La Blanca Paloma; El frente de los suspiros, by Juan de Orduña, 1942), and in those that show the tourist visit to the city (La femme et le pantin, Bolero or, more recently, Appelsinpiken). The Fountain of Neptune and the Mercury Pond appear in early productions (Le coffret de Tolède, Les fiancés de Séville, Blood and Sand), reflecting their importance as tourist icons, although their cinematographic relevance is not maintained today. Spaces such as the Garden of the Alcove, the Dance Garden or the English Garden appear only occasionally in the sampling (The Wind and the Lion, Bolero or Appelsinpiken).

In terms of the city’s gaze towards the Alcazar (walls), the image of the Patio de Banderas stands out as an intermediate space (outer wall belonging to the public space of the city of Seville), a space that acquires an important symbolic role and eclipses other 20th century icons such as the Calle Judería and its photogenic arch (Sangre y arena, La Reina Mora, Suspiros de España, Nadie conoce a nadie, Carmen) or the wall canvas restored by Joaquín Romero Murube (Bajo el cielo andaluz, En Andalucía nació el amor). Also surprising is the scarce presence, in terms of clips duration, of spaces such as the walls bordering the Murillo Gardens (María de la O, La femme et le pantin, Feria en Sevilla, Appelsinpiken), the Callejón del Agua (Currito de la Cruz, María de la O, La femme et le pantin, Nadie conoce a nadie), or even the Lion Gate (La terre des taureaux, by Jeanne Roques, 1924; Currito de la Cruz, Los alegres bribones, Knight and Day).

With regard to the typology corresponding to the city views from the site, it should be remembered that the Royal Alcazar of Seville has been used as an exotic setting to situate the films’ plots in the city, offering different perspectives from the monument towards its most recognisable icon (the Giralda Tower). Thus, the first visions (Blood and Sand) of the Giralda from the Patio de Banderas (25% of the films analysed) or from the arch of the Calle Judería (19.23% of the films) are particularly noteworthy. It should be remarked that both of these views are mainly shown in national productions, with the exception of the coproductions Nuits Andalouses, Carmen (2003), Blancanieves and The Limits of Control. The vision of the Giralda from the Grotto Gallery has also served to compose one of the clichéd postcard images of the Royal Alcazar since the 1930s, used in 11.54% of all the productions analysed (Adieu les beaux jours, Tierra y Cielo, La Blanca Paloma, Jalisco canta en Sevilla, Una cubana en España, Chateaux en Espagne); a perspective which, however, seems to be anchored in the 1940–1950s and has not been replicated in later productions.

As a complement to this work, and with the aim of disseminating the results to the public, the first film itinerary devoted exclusively to the Royal Alcazar has been created. It should be pointed out that in 2020 the Patronato organised a series of guided tours around the filming at the Alcazar which, however, have not been continued, and that Zoido Salazar [32] proposed a thematic visit as part of the tour of the Santa Cruz Quarter. Our proposal (Figure 14) seeks to allow the visitor, in the course of his or her visit, to choose certain points regarding the palaces, gardens, walls and views. It is planned to do the same for the Alhambra site in the future.

5. Conclusions

This work has focused on highlighting the cinematographic imaginary created around the Alhambra of Granada and the Royal Alcazar of Seville, as heritage sites that dynamise the film and tourist industries of two medium-sized European cities. The conducted analysis has shown that, with the advent of the cinematograph, the first fiction films shot in both the Royal Alcazar and the Alhambra contained a wide range of scenes already represented by the Romantic painters, and photographed extensively throughout the 19th century.

It has been demonstrated that, from the second decade of the 20th century, cinema and tourism became two powerful instruments of propaganda and international diplomacy. Benigno de la Vega-Inclán’s tourist configuration of Seville (the views of the city from the Alcazar or from the Santa Cruz Quarter) is mixed with the city’s cinematographic gaze, to such an extent that it is not possible to recognise which imaginary exerts a superior influence over the other. It is not surprising, therefore, that for the first time, demands were raised clamouring for the dignity of the image of Spain in the cinematograph, and laws were passed for local authorities to approve the plots of the films in advance.

Even Benigno de la Vega-Inclán, Royal Commissioner for Tourism, is unfavourable towards “cinematographic propaganda” filmed in Spanish historical-artistic sites [124]; a reticence that is justified by the filming of international “españoladas” during the second decade of the 20th century in the gardens and palaces of the Alcazar of Seville and the Alhambra of Granada: Le coffret de Tolède (Louis Feuillade, 1914), Les fiancés de Séville (Louis Feuillade, 1914), as well as Sangre y arena (Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and Max André, 1916), Christophe Colomb (Gérard Bourgeois, 1916) and El Dorado (Marcel L’Herbier, 1921). Thus, despite the effort to increase film production in Spain, and to use film as a means of changing the country’s image, the first period (1905–1936) is characterised by an occasional diffusion of both sites—albeit intense in some of the productions—in comparison with their exposure in other formats, such as painting or photography. This is a transitional stage between the domination of techniques previous to the appearance of the moving image and the power of cinema as a means of disseminating the images of both sites in the context of a fictional narrative.

During the second stage (1937–1954), an interesting finding is how the arguments deployed by film authorities are identical to those used for the promotion of tourism, so that they sometimes blend together as a coherent whole [105]. The image of Seville as a Garden of Eden is consolidated using the repeated postcard of the Giralda from the Grotto Gallery, as contemplated in Tierra y Cielo (Eusebio Fernández Ardavín, 1941), surrounded by vegetation and palm trees. The duality between the exterior (walls) and interior (palaces) of the Alcazar also appears, so that its image alternates between the costumbrism of the Calle Judería and the vision of the Giralda from the Patio de Banderas. In the case of Granada, the feature films of this period—with historical themes, but also romantic, costumbrist and typical of national Catholicism—opt for a dialogue between the Alhambra, which the characters visit sporadically, and the rest of the city, where other parts of the plot take place, but essentially limiting this latter space to the Albaicín or Sacromonte neighbourhoods and some specific places in the old part of the city.

During the late-Francoist period (1955–1975), an attempt was made to transfer the picturesqueness and authenticity of the heritage cities to a still unexploited Costa del Sol, gradually constructing a new metonymy of Spain. At a time when the Spanish imaginary and patriotic identity were faltering, both monuments stood as a resistance of the traditional image, being used to recreate an exotic past and a certain national identity [70,71,72,73,74,75], and were prepared to receive the increasing number of tourists who would derive the tourist boom of the 1960s towards the inland cities of Andalusia.

It is in this period that the Alhambra welcomes the largest number of shootings (international productions and coproductions) through the production of romantic scenes. The strategy for attracting foreign tourism consisted of two main aspects: on the one hand, the choice of coproduction as a business structure that guaranteed the distribution of the film in the foreign country and, on the other hand, the introduction in the script of two protagonist partners in which one of them embodied a local character while the other, a foreign national, came to the city for different reasons—tourism, honeymoon, business matters—and, of course, to visit the Alhambra [34]. In contrast, coproductions with France and Latin America gave way to international productions in which the Alcazar was used as a transnational representation of exotic settings [78], which questions the authenticity of the visit to heritage sites [51]. It is evident that film operates as a soft selling of the territory, capable of appealing not only to rational elements, but also and above all to emotional ones. As López, Nicosia and Lois point out, when a film produces travel narratives, it creates a space to see and scrutinise [82]. However, in the case of heritage sites, this action must be conditional on their preservation for future generations. Preservation is meant as not only their tangible dimension, but also the care of the image that is communicated of them. National productions showing the Alcazar, however, always choose to represent it from the outside.

After the restoration of democracy in Spain, with tourism already well established in terms of numbers, and an image of the country—in strictly visual but not in social terms—already consolidated, some changes take place, the most obvious being the fact that the number of films with scenes shot in the Alhambra significantly decreases, giving rise to the appearance of the “other Granada” (the “civil” Granada, that of everyday life) with the arrival of the 21st century. This was, however, the period of splendour in terms of explosion in the number of film shots inside the Royal Alcazar. Tourist visits to the interior of the palaces were restricted during this period (due to intensive restoration and discovery). It is worth pointing out that since 2010, the Alhambra has had a Master Plan for the preservation of the monument, its cultural landscape, the sustainability of the monument and its relationship with the information and knowledge society, while the Royal Alcazar did not have a Preventive Conservation Plan until 2021. Sustainability is integrated as an aspect to be taken into account in the management of the Royal Alcazar, although its economic and heritage aspects still take precedence over the social and environmental impacts that the massification of cultural tourism generates, and the change in the visitor profile causes [79,125].

In terms of spatial dimension, the relevance of the spaces shown in traditional formats and their transfer to the cinema (with a few notable exceptions) is verified, feeding back into the tourist imaginary of the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar as a “third space” encapsulated within the cities of Granada and Seville. Thus, from a cinematographic point of view, Granada can be segmented into three areas. Firstly, the interior of the Alhambra, whose images are often complemented by others filmed from the exterior, using the numerous viewpoints available in the city. Secondly, three significant and omnipresent areas, both in films in which the Alhambra is the protagonist and in those in which its images are obviated. This refers to the Carrera del Darro, the Albaicín and Sacromonte neighbourhoods. Together with the Cathedral, the Plaza Nueva and the Alhambra Palace Hotel, these are places that frequently appear in the films. Finally, the rest of the city, including significant spaces such as the Paseo del Salón (Salon Promenade) by the river Genil, are scarcely represented in feature films. As a result, audiovisual fiction reinforces the tourist promotion of the city, based essentially on the binomial Alhambra-Darro and Albaicín, to the detriment of other areas of the city with much less projection.

In turn, the analysis of the cinematographic spaces of the Royal Alcazar reveals four distinct typologies: the interior of the heritage site, with the palaces and gardens, and the exterior of the site, with a double gaze from the city towards the interior of the site (walls), and from the Alcazar towards the city (views). It should be noted that, although the gardens were the preferred space for filmmakers during the late-Francoist period, from the transition onwards, the interior of the palaces has been frequently shown. This strategy may be due either to the ease of filming in an open space, such as the gardens, or to the possibility that Patrimonio Nacional restricted filming inside the monument, despite the fact that Seville City Council retained ownership of it.

The arrival of the 21st century brings with it a concept of transnational production which, although it evokes the principles of the late-Francoist period, now takes on a new meaning. The making of European coproductions can foster the dissemination of images and mutual knowledge of different heritage and artistic environments, as well as extend the idea of a common European culture, which will be linked to the spirit of Horizon 2020: “The circulation of and engagement with films about other European pasts than those with which one is most familiar has the capacity, therefore, to enhance understanding and communication within and between nations and cultures” [78] (p. 184).

Additionally, as Schiavone, Reijnders and Brandellero [76] point out, the relationship between audiovisual fiction, tourism and historical heritage may have strictly utilitarian implications for the latter. In this way, audiovisual fiction, even in spite of its limited level of veracity, would act as a catalyst for attracting tourists (national and especially non-national), with the aim of positioning and consolidating the site as a must-see tourist attraction. However, once this stage has been reached, the need to disseminate the image of heritage through film disappears, especially bearing in mind that a film production involves certain risks [79]: material risks, such as the possibility of architectural deterioration during filming, and risks relating to the representation of heritage itself, as it can provide an uncertain, superficial or banal image. There is clear evidence that, at least in the case of the Alhambra in Granada, this stage has already been reached, while for the Royal Alcazar a plethora of high-impact audiovisual projects is being contemplated. Notwithstanding, further research is needed in order to verify whether this situation will be sustained in the future. Thus, the concept of sustainability applied to these tourist landmarks, based primarily on their capacity to receive tourists, should be extended to include their symbolic projection and, consequently, establish a certain degree of control over the intensity, frequency and type of images that are disseminated of these World Heritage Sites.

This therefore suggests that two primary threats to destination sustainability, heritage sites and local tourism can be detected in medium-sized cities when audiovisual-induced visits are enhanced. On the one hand, as already noted, the attraction of an excessive flow of tourists results in poor quality visitation, and can also lead to deterioration of the site, as well as the trivialisation of its public image and identity, when visitors specifically seek to emulate other locations. On the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, the massification of tourists in these privileged heritage sites results in the identification of the city exclusively with them (as in the case of the Alhambra-Darro and Albaicín in Granada), or even with a particular audiovisual product (remember, in this vein, the tourist boom related to the Game of Thrones series in Seville and the impacts on social networks). The “other Seville” or the “other Granada” are thus forgotten in audiovisual induction. After the COVID-19 pandemic, when tourist destinations have evolved from “overtourism” to “undertourism” and vice versa, it is essential, at all events, to promote the setting up of audiovisual productions in other areas of these medium-sized tourist cities, not so well known or exploited for film purposes, in order to balance and sustainably redirect not only tourism flows, but also economic wealth.

The Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar, as a third space within the city itself, also generate, as we have seen, favourite places and forgotten places. The dissemination of other lesser-known spaces in audiovisual production is perceived as an opportunity for the sites’ sustainability, as well as the creation of specialised itineraries such as the one presented in this article, raising awareness of heritage sites from another perspective. In other words, it becomes evident that the future of both medium-sized cities is linked to the synergy between the audiovisual and tourism industries, as a means of disseminating identity and culture in the ever-growing panorama of sustainable smart cities. In this sense, this work can be considered to be in the process of results’ diffusion, with the possibility of extending the analysis to all of the audiovisual productions—not only cinematographic—filmed at the Alhambra and the Royal Alcazar in order to assess the impacts of internet audiovisual platforms on these heritage sites.