Spain Aims to Bring In Bollywood

Spain Aims to Bring In Bollywood

Spain is becoming increasingly popular with Hollywood film producers and now the country is trying to be just as appealing to Bollywood, bringing in plenty of Indian filmmakers in the process.

Bollywood loves the Spanish fiestas and celebrations.

The Spanish landscapes and cities are often used in movies that require a Wild West background. Spain also played host to some of the locations in Star Wars and has even Game of Thrones has been filmed there.

What Spain expects will appeal to the Bollywood boys are the ferias and fiestas and celebrations in Spain. Bringing in Bollywood also means bringing in a lot of Indian tourists with it too, a win-win for the country.

Madrid will play host to the annual International Film Awards; essentially the Indian Oscars. The event is going to bring some of the biggest stars of Bollywood to Spain including major names like Hrithik Roshan, star of the 2011 Bollywood epic Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.

While you might struggle to get your mouth around that name you should definitely try and find a copy of it for yourself. The movie was set in Spain, with the La Tomatina festival in Buñol featured in the movie. It was filmed in Seville, Barcelona and the Costa Brava. It was the best selling movie of 2011 in Bollywood and brought a lot of positive attention to the diverse landscapes Spain offers to Bollywood producers.

Enrique Ruiz de Lera, the director of the London office of Turespaña, the company behind the deal with Bollywood producers, told the Spanish media that they saw an instant rise in the number of people requesting visas to get into Spain.

The figures released by the Spanish tourism industry show that over 60,000 Indian tourists came to the country in 2011, much higher than the previous year. The number had risen again by 2015; this time to 85,000. As the middle-class of India grows so too does the number of people making their way to Spain; already the top tourist destination in Europe.

The UN World Tourism Organisation expect that 50 million tourists worldwide will come from India by 2020, a massive increase on the 18 million Indian tourists of 2014. The tourism board of Spain, Turespaña, believe that the biggest factor in the rise of Spanish popularity with India is the success of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and they are keen to do more business with Bollywood.

Turespaña are expected to put together adverts featuring top Bollywood stars enjoying themselves at the Madrid show and in some of the more extravagant locations of Spain, showcasing what the country has to offer.