The Planas Archive is Europe’s largest archive dedicated to tourism.
Housed in a former photographic processing plant, which has now been converted into a creative hub for artists, the archive holds 3 million images that illustrate the relationship between photography and the history of tourism.

The tour is an indescribable experience that allows us to explore the history, heritage and identity of the Balearic Islands.

The Planas Archive holds documents from the photographic processing factory Casa Planas; it contains photographs of industrially produced postcards which travelled all over the world promoting Spain’s beginnings as a tourist destination: photographs of the landscape and its transformation, reports on the first hotels, and photographs of cultural events from the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

The company eventually expanded to 14 branches and marked the beginning of a new imaging industry. Furthermore, the passion of the entrepreneur Josep Planas i Montanyà for photography is evident in his extensive collection of cameras and photographic equipment of great historical value.

The archive is currently managed by the visual artist and researcher Marina Planas, who takes an artistic approach to how we engage with archives from the perspective of contemporary art.

“Josep Planas, the photographer of the tourism boom”