Lorraine Williamson
Spain’s beaches and big-name cities are still pulling in vast crowds. But the sheer volume is now forcing a rethink. In the first 11 months of 2025, Spain welcomed close to 91.5 million international tourists, the highest figure in the INE’s FRONTUR series, while spending hit €126.7 billion over the same period.
Those numbers are a triumph on paper. On the ground, they are a flashpoint — from jammed historic centres to strained housing markets. It is in that tension that Madrid is now trying to steer the Spanish tourism model shift towards a wider map: inland, mid-sized cities, and travel outside the summer crush.
“Deconcentrate, diversify, desaisonalise, digitise”
The clearest signal came this week from Spain’s Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu, during a visit to Palencia in Castilla y León. He argued Spain needs to “deconcentrate destinations, diversify products, desaisonalise the offer and digitalise the tourist experience”, with inland cities playing a starring role.
Hereu’s logic is simple: when a country reaches these levels of visitors and income, the old formula stops working. He pointed to Palencia — and places like it — as proof that Spain has heritage, culture and landscapes beyond the usual postcards, and that spreading demand could ease pressure on saturated hotspots.
Why the old model is starting to bite
Spain is not “anti-tourism”. It is, however, living with the side effects of success.
In parts of the Balearics and other high-demand destinations, officials have begun pushing back against the unintended consequences of tourism driven by viral social media trends — where once-quiet spots become overwhelmed almost overnight.
Meanwhile, protests against overtourism have become a regular feature in some areas, often centred on housing costs, neighbourhood disruption and the feeling that daily life is being squeezed out by short-term stays.
Barcelona’s plan to phase out all licensed tourist apartments by late 2028 is one of the most dramatic examples of a city trying to claw back housing supply.
The inland pitch: culture, calm, and a longer season
The government’s strategy is not simply “send tourists somewhere else”. It is about making inland breaks easier to book, easier to navigate, and more attractive year-round.
That matters because seasonality is one of Spain’s long-running tourism problems. Summer peaks create intense, short-lived demand — along with temporary jobs and overloaded services — then large parts of the system go quiet. A longer season can mean steadier income for hotels, restaurants, guides and cultural venues, without the same spike in pressure.
It also aligns with what many travellers are already doing: looking for smaller cities, local food, walkable historic quarters and nature-led itineraries that do not feel like a conveyor belt.
How Madrid wants to make it happen
The practical lever is money and municipal partnerships.
Hereu highlighted collaboration with town halls through Spain’s tourism sustainability plans, aimed at improving infrastructure and accessibility — things like routes, trails and visitor-ready upgrades tied to local landmarks.
These initiatives sit within Spain’s broader push to modernise tourism through sustainability and digital transformation — a direction set out in the national strategy for sustainable tourism in destinations.
Digital, in particular, is not a buzzword here. Spain’s state tourism tech body SEGITTUR is building platforms designed to improve the visitor experience and connect services at destination level — the kind of tools that can help lesser-known places show up in searches before travellers default to Barcelona, Málaga or Mallorca.
The challenge: spreading visitors without exporting the problem
A shift like this can work — but it is not automatic.
If inland cities market themselves too successfully without planning, they risk recreating the same crowding issues on a smaller scale. If they market too cautiously, the “redistribution” never really happens. And if housing regulation and enforcement lag behind demand, short-term rental pressures can follow tourists into new neighbourhoods.
That is why the Spain tourism model shift will be judged less by slogans and more by whether it changes what visitors actually do — and whether residents feel the benefits without losing their town to a boom-and-bust cycle.
Tourism spending record
The test for 2026
Over 2026, the key test will be whether investment and digital visibility translate into real behaviour change: more off-season city breaks, more itineraries that include inland stops, and less strain in the places already at capacity.
Spain’s tourism numbers suggest demand is not going away. The question now is whether the country can keep the economic upside — while making tourism feel liveable again, both for residents and for the visitors who want something more than the usual sun-and-sand script.