Spain’s building bubble basically boiled down to more houses built than required, and it’s the same with its museums.

Spain has lots of museums, but 70% of Spaniards don’t go to them. The paradox is the number of museums are growing whilst the number of Spaniards who use them is falling.

Sure, there is always an impressive queue waiting to enter Museo El Prado, The Thyssen Museum or the Reina Sofía one, but it is misleading because most of them are not Spaniards. In fact, the number of visitors that these top museums receive has grown from 42 million to 57 million in the last decade.

Why?

A recent survey carried out by the Ministry of Culture entitled, Conociendo a Todos los Públicos came up with some rather surprising findings concerning how people view museum users: lonely, grey, glasses wearers and bohemian. In fact, in reality, the average museum visitor is female and around 42, employed and with advanced schooling.

Our hosts don’t go into the almost reverential palaces of culture dedicated to great artists; they go into small, local museums, like waxworks ones or ones dedicated to aviation and motorbikes, or even the culinary ones like the Museo de Chocolate de Astorga.

And then we have the young generation who are divorced from the tastes of their parents – haven’t they always been – so that museums are going the same way as the cinema. If there is a school trip to a museum, you’re more likely to see them texting on their mobiles than looking at the exhibits.

So we have a ‘Museum Bubble,’ unfortunately: between the year 2000 and 2010 the number of museums in Spain grew from 1,125 to 1,479, which is a 31% increase. Compare that to the meagre 2.3% growth of visitors in the last two decades and you’re left with museums wondering how they are going to pay the bills…

(New: Spain)