Cultural tourism is a good way to promote and, consequently, safeguard the cultural heritage of sites. Film tourism is an increasingly demanded form of cultural tourism more focused on the fictional rather than on the authenticity of sites, depriving them from their true identity. This article is proposing a system of indicators of sustainable development in order to evaluate and guarantee long-term sustainability in those sites identified with traditional cultural heritage and where films have been shot. The Historic Centre of Peñíscola, which was declared a Historic-Artistic Site in 1972 and has become film scenery in numerous occasions, has been chosen to be evaluated. The union of a series of film sceneries obtained from the cinema productions that best match the local heritage, through the latter has resulted in a final cultural landscape where the degree of conciliation between them is high. Therefore, the welfare of the host society is in balance with the tourist demands, which makes the Historic Centre of Peñíscola an accurate study case that can contribute to improve a methodology we aim to extrapolate to other tourist destinations threatened by a new uncontrolled mass of tourist.

Cultural tourism is a good way to promote and safeguard the cultural heritage of a place. Cultural tourism includes film tourism, which consists of those places where cinema and TV productions have been shot. This can contribute to valuing the local cultural heritage or, by contrast, to reifying it and, consequently, to the loss of its authentic and its identity. In the following article we propose a system of indicators of sustainable development in order to evaluate and guarantee long-term sustainability in those places identified with traditional cultural heritage and that have become film sceneries. Once the study cases have been identified, the cultural landscapes that are going to be evaluated will be defined. To do that, we will identify and select the film sceneries according to the degree of conciliation between these and cultural heritage. The impact on society of the cinema productions will also be taken into account. The union amongst the film sceneries through the local heritage (built heritage, landscape heritage, etc.) will result in one or several cultural landscapes where the balance between the welfare of the host society and the tourism demands will be evaluated. To put into practice the following methodology, the Historic Centre of Peñíscola has been chosen to be evaluated. This was declared a Historic-Artistic Site in 1972 and has a long history as film scenery, which has contributed to its valuation and has brought it closer to the audience.