Spain’s economic recovery, now in its second year, can give a good part of the credit to a booming tourist industry, powered in part by tourists’ fears of other warm places such as Tunisia and Egypt.
Spain’s statistics agency announced Friday that 68.1 million visitors came to Spain during the year, a nearly 5% rise over 2014’s record number. Since 14% of Spain’s economy is in the tourism sector, those numbers are important.
Other factors, including lower energy costs and weak interest rates, combined with the tourism burst to raise Spain’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 3.2% for the year, and to lower unemployment dramatically. The rise in GDP was one of Europe’s best.
The areas with the biggest tourist draw, accounting for more than half the total, were Catalonia with more than 17 million visitors, and the two island areas, the Canaries and the Balearics, with over 11 million each.
For more details from the statistics agency, see TheLocal.es HERE
