Foreign tourism rises 5,2% in Spain

The number of international tourists that visited Spain in January 2018 was 5.2% higher than in January 2017, according to recent information from the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE). In total, Spain welcomed 4.1 million foreign tourists this past January.

By autonomous community, those that saw the most foreign tourists were the Canary Islands (28.8%), Catalonia (21%) and Andalusia (13.1%). Foreign tourism in the Canary Islands dropped 0.8%, while Catalonia saw 2% more tourists and Andalusia, 3.4% more. In other communities, growth was even higher: Balearic Islands (11.4%), Valencian Community (11.3%) and Madrid (8.3%).

By country of origin, the United Kingdom sent the most tourists in January 2018, with a total of 799,475 visitors. This makes up 19.5% of the total, with a slight increase of 0.2% over January of last year.

The next countries on the list, which can be seen in the graph below, were Germany, with 502,298 tourists and an increase of 4.2%, and France, with 491,551 visitors (up 5.8%). The number of tourists arriving from the United States in January rose 21.2%.