More than 8.2 million tourists visited Spain in June, not too far from pre-pandemic numbers, according to the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, and Tourism.

Last month Spain reached 85.5% of levels recorded in June 2019, and exceeded those from June last year, reports Schengen Visa Info.

Although the number of overseas visitors remained below pre-Covid levels, the country registered three times more arrivals last month than it did in June 2021, on the further easing of Covid restrictions.

Visitors from the United Kingdom represented the highest number of arrivals into Spain, with one in four passengers coming into the country last month being from Britain.

“The Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands are clearly leading the recovery of international travellers, undoubtedly favoured by the return this 2022 of the British tourists, who already represents one in four passengers. 

Our islands are thus approaching the pre-pandemic figures initially of high season for which we have really encouraging prospects even in the current context of rising prices,” said Minister of Tourism, Reyes Maroto.

The Ministry added that the Balearics recorded the highest number of UK tourists. In total, airports throughout the country received 2,079,084 passengers from the UK.

As well as visitors from Britain, there was also a high number of arrivals from Germany and Italy. German passengers made up the second highest number of visitors to Spain after the UK, totalling 1,322,410 last month. Italy was in third place with a total of 716,042 passengers travelling to Spain, the majority flying to Madrid and Catalonia. Arrivals from France came in fourth place, with more than 647,000 coming to Spain in June.

Representing around 13% of the economy, tourism in Spain is on course to make a full recovery a year earlier than forecast, Bloomberg reports.
“Tourism has exceeded the best of expectations -- until recently it was difficult to think we could have returned to 2019 levels,” said Carlos Cuerpo, head of the Spanish Treasury. “Beyond a growth revision, what’s important is the positive expectations we are seeing.”