Torreblanca, Castellón – A new form of tourism for a cultural and societal transformation of the territory – Paul Elvere DELSART
I am Paul Elvere DELSART, a designer of strategic territories. I act for the cultural and societal transformation of territories by designing territorial narratives, creating cross-sectoral projects and deploying an alternative territorial brand for Torreblanca, Castellón, in Spain. If I have chosen to develop in Torreblanca an immersive fiction tourism, a transformation tourism, an alternative tourism with high symbolic content and a tourism inspired by utopia, it is because I seek to lay the foundations of a new civilizational model that combines spirituality, ethics, social innovation and deep ecology. My ambition goes far beyond the conventional framework of classic tourism development. Through these forms of tourism, I propose a transformative experience where each visitor becomes an actor of change, a builder of a desirable future and of a reinvented global society. My project is based on a transmedia narrative where the boundary between fiction and reality becomes porous, almost imperceptible. What I call “immersive fiction tourism” is in fact a Live Action Role Playing game (LARP) within a world in the process of transformation. It takes place within a narrative universe, that of the Green Empire of the East and the West, which I have designed as a context for projection and societal foresight. In Torreblanca, this social fiction takes concrete shape in hybrid, educational, ecological, spiritual, intellectual and recreational places labelled LE PAPILLON SOURCE. These are emerging real infrastructures that embody an active utopia and initiate territorial dynamics of cooperation, education, creation, resilience and social justice. This tourism is also a transformation tourism because it is based on the idea that travel is not an escape or a mere consumption of experiences, but a process of awakening and inner transmutation. Visitors, by entering the universe of the Green Empire of the East and the West, experience a break from everyday life, a confrontation with strong values, a reframing of their place in the world. They reconnect with life, with their life mission, with their potential to contribute. I aim to awaken in each of them a new will to engage with humanity and nature. The tourism I propose is alternative in the sense that it escapes conventional market logic and prefabricated models of territorial planning. It values small municipalities, forgotten territories, popular knowledge and local resources. Torreblanca thus becomes a laboratory of resilience and autonomy where new practices in agriculture, pedagogy, water and natural resource management are developed, all from a perspective of endogenous, circular and equitable development. This tourism is profoundly symbolic because every element of the setting, every story, every installation embodies an idea, an archetype, a vision. The vertical vegetal infrastructures, the Vegetal Calderas, are at once works of art, biodiversity generators, places of meditation, and symbols of rebirth. They are gateways to another way of inhabiting the Earth. They are not simply visited, they are lived, felt and internally inhabited. Finally, what I am developing in Torreblanca is a tourism inspired by utopia. I fully embrace this utopia as a vital necessity of our time. In the face of the collapse of current models, it becomes imperative to conceive and test other forms of human organization. Torreblanca is the matrix of a possible golden age, a prototype of transnational cooperation, a cradle of the future Mediterranean Societal Union. What I am building here is meant to be reproduced elsewhere, across all continents, by positive mimetism, until the entire planet becomes a network of educational, ecological, spiritual and solidarity-based infrastructures. I do not create attractions for mere entertainment. I create worlds to awaken, to transmit, to heal and to bring people together. I turn tourism into a path of elevation, a diplomacy of peoples, a tool for building peace and harmony between civilizations. Through the EL4DEV programme and the Think and Do Tank LE PAPILLON SOURCE EL4DEV, I propose a structured, systemic, participatory model, based on cybernetics, cooperation, wisdom, beauty and collective experimentation. In this sense, Torreblanca is more than a starting point. It is a living symbol, a sanctuary of the future, a call to unity in human diversity.