Spas, steamships and sardines : Edwardian package tourism and the marketing of Galician regionalism

From 1901 until the First World War, alongside its principal business of shipping rubber and leather to and from the USA and Northern Brazil, Liverpool's Booth Steamship Company (familiarly known as the ‘Booth Line’) ran a portfolio of highly successful holiday tours to Madeira, Portugal and Galicia. Although this side of the company's business has long been forgotten by business and maritime historians, this paper argues that the company's leisure tours were an important contribution to the early history of British tourism in Spain. In addition, it argues that we should not underestimate the significance of this project for our understanding of Galicia's own history, and in particular for expanding our understanding of the Galician regionalist movement and its relationship with the wider world