Spain is trying to change the sun-and-sangria model that has made it one of the world’s prime tourist destinations, although a record-breaking summer for visits suggests this will not be easy.
New figures show there was a bumper August, in which there were 11.3 million visits to Spain, the most the country has seen in one month and putting it on track to surpass last year’s total foreign visits of 94 million, which was also a record.
“We are still seeing an upward trend,” said tourism minister Jordi Hereu.
That trend has been impossible to ignore since the Covid pandemic, when restrictions on movement virtually shut down an industry that represents 13 per cent of Spanish GDP.
RM Block
In 2022, arrivals increased by 130 per cent, then 19 per cent in 2023 and 10 per cent last year. Although this year’s increase is expected to be more modest, the numbers continue to climb.
Spain is second only to France as a draw for international tourism. British, French and German visitors are the biggest markets for Spain, with Ireland providing 2.8 million visits last year, 12 per cent more than in 2023.
However, while the soaring numbers have helped the Spanish economy outperform its neighbours in recent years, they have also drawn a backlash from locals, who have started calling for more controls on the industry.
The last two summers have seen protests in tourists hubs such as Barcelona, Málaga, the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands. In some cases, those demonstrating were simply calling for a more considered approach by the authorities, but in others they daubed anti-tourist graffiti on walls or fired water pistols at foreign visitors.
“Tourism was always seen as something positive and the media presented it as such without the slightest criticism,” says Francisco Femenia, a lecturer at Madrid’s Complutense University. “And that has changed radically.”
In recent months, tourism has become inextricably linked to the country’s housing crisis, which has seen rents soar as salaries stagnate. Much of the blame has been attributed to short-term rental accommodation, which critics say pushes up prices in city centres, sending locals elsewhere and stripping those areas of charm.
In Ibiza, more than 80 per cent of whose economy is based on tourism, the situation has been particularly drastic. Some professionals even commute from other islands in the Balearics each day, because their wages cannot match rental costs.
Earlier this year, the Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said there were “too many Airbnbs and not enough homes” and he pledged to prevent what he called the “uncontrolled” expansion of the use of properties for tourism. In May, his government called for the removal of more than 60,000 properties from Airbnb’s listings platform, alleging that they breached regulations. Meanwhile, in Barcelona, the mayor has announced plans to eliminate the city’s 10,000 or so registered short-term holiday rentals by the end of 2028.
A tourist tax is in place in regions such as Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. A relatively small charge per night stayed, it aims to discourage less discerning visitors and raise funds for local reinvestment. Elsewhere, the city of Toledo has recently introduced a pioneering measure that limits the size of guided groups walking through its narrow streets.
Although debate rages as to whether such initiatives actually work, they do reflect how both politicians and the industry appear to have digested the idea that Spanish tourism is at a crossroads.
“We need to begin a new cycle based on quality, innovation and sustainability,” said the Exceltur tourism association recently, as it took stock of yet another record-breaking summer.
To that end, in June, the central government unveiled a campaign – Think You Know Spain? Think Again – aimed at diversifying the country’s tourism and guiding visitors towards lesser-known areas, especially in the interior. One promotional video for the campaign showed a family waking in a rural hotel, plucking oranges from a tree and spotting wild goats as they trekked through a mountainous landscape – a far cry from the beaches and low-cost hedonism that have long been associated with Spain.
These government efforts are two-fold, not just to shift tourism away from saturated coastal hubs, but also to provide a boost to relatively deprived rural areas inland, known as “empty Spain”. Those regions, such as Castilla y León and Extremadura, have been struggling for decades with emigration to cities and lack of investment.
“These are the parts of Spain that won’t protest against the impact of tourism,” says Femenia. “Because they know they need it as a way of offsetting the decline of farming, a sparse population and low birth rates”.
However, the Think You Know Spain? campaign is still in its infancy and, as this summer’s figures show, the Mediterranean coast and the Balearic and Canary Islands remain the big draw for foreigners.
While persuading Spaniards to go kayaking in Galicia or wine-tasting in La Rioja may be a viable goal, pushing British, French or Irish holidaymakers away from the beaches and bars of Tenerife, Majorca or Marbella is much more ambitious.
“Foreign tourists have a certain idea of what they want from Spain and it’s very difficult to change that,” says Femenia.
