Catalonia loses domestic tourism while foreign spending rises by almost 12%

According to Datur data, the decline in domestic tourism has now reached 14% with information available up to June. The fall brings the volume of these travellers back to figures close to those of 2021, after the strong recovery seen during the first years after the pandemic.

Barcelona reflects that change of cycle particularly well. Between 2021 and 2023, Spanish visitors grew by 31.37%, but over the following two years that progress was almost undone. In 2025, Datur counted 11.2 million tourists staying overnight in the city: around 2.8 million came from Spain and 8.3 million were foreign visitors.

International behaviour is precisely the opposite. Between 2021 and 2025, Barcelona recorded a 72.3% increase in foreign visitors. The United States currently leads the main international markets for the Catalan capital, followed by France, the United Kingdom and Italy, while countries such as China and Poland are growing particularly quickly.

The trend is not confined to Barcelona. Girona has increased its international tourists by 63.9% since 2021 and Tarragona by 58.6%, while Lleida shows more moderate growth of 42.5%. In contrast, Girona and Tarragona already receive fewer domestic travellers than in the first years after the pandemic.

The latest official data for 2026 also reinforce the economic weight of foreign visitors. In June alone, around two million international tourists arrived in Catalonia, 1.4% more than a year earlier, and they spent €2.726 billion, 5.7% more. Between January and June, their cumulative spending was around €11.8 billion, close to 12% above the same period in 2025.

The phenomenon is directly noticeable in Barcelona because spending growth is outpacing growth in visitor numbers. The Barcelona destination as a whole closed 2025 with a direct economic impact of €14.041 billion, of which €10.376 billion corresponded to the city. The challenge is no longer only to attract more travellers, but to manage tourism that is increasingly international and has greater spending power.

Datur’s data come from analysis of more than 11 million mobile-phone records from the INE and make it possible to follow visitors’ origin and movements. The tool excludes from the calculation those who live in the province being analysed, a methodological difference that explains why its figures do not exactly match other tourism-occupancy statistics.

For Barcelona, the result is a silent yet visible transformation: fewer visitors arriving from Madrid, Valencia or the Balearic Islands, and growing weight for those arriving from other countries. Hotels, restaurants and shops receive higher spending, but the city also becomes more dependent on international tourism, which increasingly sets the pace of its seasons, its most visited neighbourhoods and much of its urban economy.