Proposal for the creation of a national observatory of the nightlife industry in Spain
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Abstract
The lack of systematized and updated data on the nightlife industry in Spain by public organizations is a negative factor for the efficient governance of ‘the night’, especially in the country’s largest cities, in heavily touristified urban centers of the Iberian coastline and island regions, as well as in small and medium-sized cities in the countryside. Based on the author’s research experience in this field (2004-2023) and the results of an ‘emergency ethnography’ carried out on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on formal and informal nightlife in the country, this article presents the proposal for the creation of a National Observatory of the Spanish Nightlife Industry, setting out in detail a possible operational structure, a network of sources for the provision of quantitative primary data as well as some of the products derived from the analysis of the potentially mobilized data set. The article concludes by stressing the importance of this new observatory as an indispensable tool for the strategic planning of the sector in the medium and long term and for the improvement of public policies related to the governance of ‘the night’ at national, regional, and municipal levels.