A photo designed to promote Spain's Costa Brava resort region featured a man and a boy holding hands and gazing out at a turquoise sea halfway around the world, in Australia.
The photo was part of a pamphlet published last month to plug a gastronomical fair in the scenic region on Spain's northeast coast, a major magnet for vacationers from all over Europe.
The Costa Brava tourism board acknowledged the goof on Wednesday, saying that when the photo was published, board officials did not know it actually showed a beach in Perth, a city in western Australia.
The photo part of the pamphlet was arranged rather quickly through an advertising agency, board spokeswoman Victoria Mas said.
"We told them what we wanted ... a photo of an adult with a child," Mas said, adding that she did not know if the agency, too, was unaware the shot was from the wrong part of the world.
This is not the first time the Costa Brava region has used stock photos of foreign beaches to promote itself.
The tourism board recently withdrew an ad campaign that relied on shots of the Bahamas to promote Girona, the Spanish province where Costa Brava lies.
"They were isolated incidents," Mas said.