ABSTRACT
Tourism has been one of the most dynamic economic sectors in the second half of the twentieth century, and its role in the restructuring of European economies is widely acknowledged. This chapter focuses on polarisation, the earlier quotation on globalisation also provides a framework for understanding the counter-balancing effects of local economic development strategies. It focuses on contribution of tourism to the transformation of the Portuguese economic space. Tourism has to be seen as a component in larger cycles, or reciprocal flows, of population movements. Examples: First, in respect of high levels of expenditure by tourists originating in France, a fact that is related to the history of Portuguese mass emigration to that country, and the subsequent generation of return flows to visit families and friends. Secondly, there are relatively strong urban-rural domestic tourism flows in Portugal, which are rooted in an earlier generation of rural-urban migration movements. The regional distribution of tourism, as would be expected, is highly polarized.
