Everything has been turned upside down in Spain’s favorite tourist resorts: now tourists are trying to relax in this country differently, migrating en masse from the southern Mediterranean resorts to the north to the Atlantic, where they hardly ever went.
Provinces such as Galicia, Asturias, and Cantabria, long considered too rainy for summer holidays, saw a huge jump in international tourist arrivals in August, up 47% from last year to 435,500, the Financial Times reported. As its experts add, the reason is primarily a “flurry of warnings” about extreme temperatures in the south and heat exhaustion.
“The north of Spain is growing,” commented Alberto Terol, an entrepreneur and hotel owner who sits on the board of directors of real estate company GMP. The weather has become warmer and less rainy, while prices remain relatively affordable. Tourists also agree. Carmen Mendiburu, a student and coffee barista, spent her summer holidays in Almería in the south as a child, but this year she chose the north coast. “I live in Madrid, where the number of trees is minimal and the temperature reaches 40 degrees, I didn’t want to go south to die even more from the heat,” she said. The regional government of Galicia also said it was seeing a “very significant increase” in the number of foreign tourists, who account for 30% of all tourism.
At the same time, we remind you that, according to the World Tourism Organization, Spain is the second most visited country in the world after France, in 2022 it was visited by 72 million international tourists. Tourism accounts for 12-13% of Spain’s gross domestic product. The largest group of foreign tourists in Spain is the British, followed by the French and then the Germans.
At the same time, the South Coast, on the contrary, suffered from a series of brutal heat waves this year. In Andalucia, where the Costa del Sol’s traditional tourist magnets are Malaga, Marbella, and Torremolinos, Spain’s meteorological agency issued 63 extreme heat warnings in August alone. The temperature reached 42°C. According to experts, the south will have to adapt to fewer visitors in the hottest months and rely on the “winter sun” to attract people with more favorable temperatures during the rest of the year. However, despite all the warnings, Andalusia still attracted 1.4 million foreign visitors in August, 11% more than a year ago, and hotel occupancy in the south reached record levels.