Sport heritage and the marginalization of dissonant pasts: Real Madrid, the Spanish Civil War, and Tour Bernabéu

Dissonance is an inherent aspect of heritage. Such a characteristic is particularly evident in the aftermath of authoritarian regimes and civil war conflicts that follow disputes over the right to transmit a specific version of the past. This article examines the interpretation of the Spanish Civil War at Real Madrid’s tourist attraction – The Tour Bernabéu – located within the Santiago Bernabéu stadium and explores what role local cultural, political, and/or economic considerations play in the remembrance and/or marginalization of this past. Our findings echo that not all pasts are objects of negotiation in the present. At the Tour Bernabéu, the club’s heritage associated with the Spanish Civil War is deemed as dissonant and consequently marginalized due to five essential factors: (1) Franco’s memory policies and laws, (2) historical sentiments of hate and revenge nurtured by Santiago Bernabéu, (3) the political ideology of post-dictatorship presidents, (4) open wounds derived from the Spanish Civil War, and (5) current economic and touristic interests of Real Madrid. Our paper advances tourism heritage scholarship by evidencing how globally famous sport-based heritage tourism attractions can ignore locally relevant and politically sensitive dissonant heritages in favor of a market-friendly ‘global heritage’.