Spain ups the ante to attract Bollywood filmmakers

The filming of the Bollywood epic, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, on the streets of Pamplona in 2011. Photo: Villar Lopez/EPA

Already an increasingly popular backdrop for Hollywood film producers, Spain is now fluttering its fantastically floral eyelids in the direction of Bollywood in the hope of attracting Indian filmmakers to its shores…

Spain’s rugged landscapes and stunning cities have been used as stand-ins for the US Wild West, far-away Star Wars lands, and even the other-worldliness of Game of Thrones.

But it is the country’s famously colourful ferias and fiestas that Spain hopes can turn Bollywood heads – and also tempt a larger chunk of India’s fast-growing overseas tourism industry in the process.

Next week Madrid will host the annual International Film Academy awards, which are widely known as the Indian Oscars. The event will attract some of Bollywood’s biggest stars to Spain, including Hrithik Roshan, who starred in the 2011 Bollywood epic, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.

Now, while the title of that movie may be something of a mouthful, Spanish film aficionados would be well-advised to seek it out: it is set in Spain and features the famous La Tomatina festival in Buñol, while also counting Seville, Barcelona and the Costa Brava among its location shoots. It was also Bollywood’s highest-grossing movie of 2011, and piqued a certain interest among Bollywood producers in the country’s diverse landscape.

“There was an immediate impact in the number of people requesting entry visas to travel to Spain,” Enrique Ruiz de Lera, the director of the London office of Turespaña and who arranged the agency’s talks with the producers of the movie, told Spanish media.

According to figures from Spain’s tourism ministry, there were 60,444 Indians who visited Spain in 2011, which was far higher than the year previously. In 2015, that number had risen to 85,000, and as India’s middle class grows, Spain – which is already the most popular tourist destination in Europe – is keen on attracting more holidaymakers.

India is expected to account for 50 million tourists globally by 2020, up from just 18 million in 2014, according to the UN World Tourism Organization. Spain’s tourism body, Turespaña, has put the country’s growing popularity with Indians down to that one Bollywood smash, and is eager to see more collaboration with the Bollywood film industry.

The body also plans to produce a series of ads using famous Bollywood actors enjoying themselves at the Madrid show, and also in various locales across the stunning Spanish landscape.