Lorraine Williamson
Hospitals and health centres across Spain are once again feeling the strain as the annual summer surge collides with chronic staffing issues, leaving both locals and tourists facing long delays.
Every July and August, Spain’s beaches and resorts brim with holidaymakers, but behind the sun-drenched scenes, the country’s overstretched healthcare system teeters under pressure. Fewer nurses on shift, closed hospital beds, and overstretched emergency rooms have become a familiar pattern — but this year, unions say the situation is even more critical.
Holidays for some, crisis for others
While residents and tourists take advantage of the summer heat, healthcare workers are left firefighting. In some regions, as much as 50% of hospital and clinic staff are not replaced during holidays, according to the national nurses’ union, SATSE. The result? Over 10,000 hospital beds are out of service, and emergency rooms from Galicia to the Costa Blanca are seeing wait times stretch into hours.
Health workers describe exhaustion and burnout as they try to manage ballooning patient numbers with shrinking teams. “There just aren’t enough hands,” one union representative told Spanish broadcaster RTVE.
Tourist towns buckling under the weight
Nowhere is the seasonal spike felt more acutely than in Spain’s tourist hotspots. In Noja, a coastal town in Cantabria, the population balloons by up to 3,000%, yet health centres regularly operate without doctors. Across the region, as many as 80 clinics have had no physician available at times.
Benidorm, one of the country’s busiest tourist destinations, is attempting to cope by hiring additional GPs — but this model simply isn’t replicable in more rural or inland areas. In regions like Castilla-La Mancha, the situation worsens during local ferias and fiestas, when local populations swell temporarily and staff are often absent.
Proposals and patchwork solutions
Spain’s Ministry of Health has acknowledged the issue and floated short-term fixes, including reallocating trainee doctors to departments in crisis. However, such measures only scratch the surface. Some regions have focused on bolstering hospitals, while others struggle to keep basic primary care running.
One particularly stark example came in Teruel this June, where the province had no paediatrician available for an extended period. It highlighted not just summer staffing woes but a deeper, systemic lack of specialists in smaller or less affluent regions.
A year-round strain
Although summer brings the crisis to the fore, these issues persist throughout the year. Poor pay, short-term contracts, and significant regional wage differences continue to drive qualified healthcare professionals abroad or into the private sector. In some areas, nurses earn dramatically less than their counterparts in other parts of the country — a disparity that undermines efforts to recruit and retain talent.
The exodus of skilled workers is not new. But with an ageing population and rising health demands, the consequences of underinvestment and workforce neglect are now impossible to ignore.
Pressure mounts as reforms lag
The annual healthcare summer crunch in Spain is more than a seasonal headache — it’s a symptom of a broader system under duress. Unless long-term structural reforms are implemented, the cycle of staff shortages, closed beds, and delayed care will only deepen. For now, patients are left waiting. And for many in the system, both on the frontlines and in the waiting rooms, the holiday season offers no respite.