Spain, the red-hot tourist destination that’s rivaling America’s economic growth

London/Madrid CNN —
Chilly winter weather did not deter American university student Lucy Lisberg from opting for lunch at an outdoor restaurant in Plaza Mayor, a centuries-old square in central Madrid, earlier this month. It’s her first time in Spain.
“Everything here is a bit cheaper,” Lisberg, from the Chicago area, told CNN in the Spanish capital, where she was visiting friends before going to Italy for her junior-year study abroad semester. She’d been walking around, exploring the Royal Palace and the city’s main park. “I love it here. I think it’s beautiful,” she said, seated at the eatery with three friends, under sunny skies. “I love the architecture and the culture.”
Tourism is booming in Spain, helped in part by an influx of US visitors. The sector has been a “fundamental” driver of the country’s economic growth in recent years, according to its central bank — expansion that made it the fastest-growing major European economy last year, which overtook even the healthy US economy, based on estimates by the International Monetary Fund.
Spain’s gross domestic product likely increased 3.1% in 2024, the IMF said earlier this month, compared with an estimated 2.8% rise in US GDP. Growth in Europe’s fourth-largest economy was also robust in 2023, coming in at 2.7%.
While Spain’s landmarks, museums and restaurants are popular with American tourists, its economy relies a lot less on US purchases of its goods exports than do other European nations. This means the country won’t suffer as much from tariff increases on imported goods promised by US President Donald Trump.
There are many reasons for Spain’s strong economic performance since 2021, following the Covid pandemic. But “tourism is an important factor,” Carlos Cuerpo, Spain’s economy minister, told CNN’s Richard Quest late last year.
Other experts agree.
“Tourism … is doing amazingly well,” said Toni Roldan, director of the Esade Center for Economic Policy, based at the Esade business school in Madrid. “Also, it has changed, the nature of tourism. It’s not only really cheap sol y playa (sun and beach),” he told CNN, adding that there are also “sophisticated wineries” where tourists “are willing to pay to spend a few days … drinking expensive wines.”
Spain welcomed an estimated 94 million foreign visitors last year — more than ever before — who spent some €126 billion ($132 billion) in the country, the Industry and Tourism Ministry told CNN.
Tourism’s economic contribution has also grown: The sector accounted for more than 12% of Spain’s GDP in 2023 and almost the same share of its jobs, according to the latest official figures.
Tourists in front of the Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona, Spain, in July 2024. Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images
A global rebound in tourism after the pandemic was attributed to so-called revenge travel — a travel boom after Covid restrictions were lifted — and the existence of savings accumulated during lockdowns.
“However, that time is over and the tourism sector (in Spain) still appears to be strong,” Juan Pedro Aznar Alarcon, associate economics professor at Esade, which also has a campus in Barcelona, wrote in August. “There has probably been a change in consumer priorities and the way families spend their money, cutting back on other outgoings but making well-deserved holidays one of life’s essentials.”
Four million American tourists visited between January and November last year, according to the latest official data, and they may have also been lured to Spain by a strong dollar: The euro has weakened against the greenback in the past two years and now stands at near-parity.
US airlines have taken note. American Airlines announced last year that it would start flying from Chicago to Madrid as of March 2025. Meanwhile, United Airlines noted “a record increase in summer travel to Europe” and said it was extending several seasonal services to Europe into the fall and winter months, including a direct flight to Madrid from Washington Dulles International Airport.
A smaller ‘trade shock’
It’s not just tourists who are drawn to Spanish shores. Around half a million immigrants, on a net basis, have been arriving in Spain every year since 2021, said Cuerpo, the economy minister, “another very positive factor in our growth figures.”
The new arrivals have swelled the pool of workers and consumers in Spain. As immigrants come mostly from Latin America, many speak Spanish and are culturally similar to native Spaniards, making it easier to integrate them into the economy.
Another point of difference from other European nations has worked in Spain’s favor: Since its main supplier of natural gas is northern Africa, Spain did not experience steep rises in energy prices after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which led to a huge cut in Russian gas supplies to Europe. By contrast, high energy costs have hobbled Germany’s industry, contributing to economic contraction in the past two years.
Storage tanks at the liquefied natural gas terminal at the port of Barcelona, pictured in December 2022. Josep Lago/AFP/Getty Images
The nature of Spain’s trading relationship with the United States may also turn out to be an advantage. Its goods exports to the US accounted for 1.3% of its GDP in 2023 — while, for the 20 countries that use the euro, the equivalent figure was a much higher 3.1%, George Buckley, chief European economist at Nomura, told CNN citing IMF data.
As a result, Spain’s economy will take less of a hit from higher US tariffs on European imports if they are introduced. On the campaign trail, Trump talked about levies of up to 20% on all goods imports and even higher tariffs for some countries, such as China. This week he said he was considering raising tariffs on imports from China, Mexico and Canada as soon as February 1.
Europe hasn’t avoided the new president’s ire either. “The EU treats us very, very unfairly, very badly… They essentially don’t take our farm products and they don’t take our cars,” he said Thursday in virtual remarks to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, echoing comments to reporters Tuesday. On Tuesday, he also added: “So they’re going to be in for tariffs.”
Despite Spain’s lesser dependence on US demand for its goods, there will be “indirect exposure” to Trump’s tariffs through a related slowdown in the broader European economy, which will reduce the flow of European tourists to Spain, said Ruben Dewitte, economist at pan-European bank ING.
Still, as Roldan at the Esade Center for Economic Policy put it, “the trade shock is going to be smaller” compared with other European countries.
Economists think Spain will continue outperforming the wider eurozone over the next year or two, although they see its growth slowing. The IMF expects it to expand 2.3% this year, while for the eurozone it has penciled in a 1% rise and for the US 2.7%. But according to Citi, which has similar forecasts for Spain and the eurozone, weaker US growth in 2025 will leave America far behind Europe’s star economy.
And for that, Spain will have, in part, American tourists to thank.

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