MADRID: Spain expects to host more foreign visitors, and for them to spend more in total, in 2026 after the country welcomed a record 97 million tourists last year, Tourism Minister Jordi Hereu told reporters on Thursday.
“If growth continues this year, we will reach 100 million foreign tourists, but we aren’t focused on that,” Hereu said, adding that last year’s figure represented a 3.5 percent increase on 2024, while revenues from tourism rose 6.8 percent to 135 billion euros ($157 billion).
Spain is the world’s second most visited country after France, and tourism is a major source of revenue for the economy, which has by far outgrown its European peers in the past two years.
According to tourism industry lobby Exceltur, the sector accounted for an estimated 13 percent of Spain’s gross domestic product in 2025.
Hereu said in the first four months of this year — including the busy Easter holiday season — authorities were forecasting a 3.7 percent rise in visitors from abroad to 26 million people, who they expect will spend 35 billion euros, up 2.5 percent from the same period last year. The Mediterranean country’s tourism boom, while boosting its economy, has led to tension in many visitor hotspots due to the indirect effect on housing prices, congestion and natural resource degradation problems. Some popular destinations like Ibiza have cracked down on short-term rentals.
Hereu said Spain’s model was moving away from seasonality, as data showed that tourist spending had grown by 53 percent in the low and mid-seasons compared with pre-pandemic year 2019, and by 34 percent in the high season. Two-thirds of tourists who visited Spain in 2025 intend to return as they see it as a safe place, the minister said, adding that there was no sign of global geopolitical issues affecting flight availability or booking trends.
Spain expects tourist arrivals to keep growing in 2026
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Spain expects tourist arrivals to keep growing in 2026
- “If growth continues this year, we will reach 100 million foreign tourists,” Hereu said
- Spain is the world’s second most visited country after France
India plans AI ‘data city’ on staggering scale
- ‘The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius’
NEW DELHI: As India races to narrow the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China, it is planning a vast new “data city” to power digital growth on a staggering scale, the man spearheading the project says.
“The AI revolution is here, no second thoughts about it,” said Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra Pradesh state, which is positioning the city of Visakhapatnam as a cornerstone of India’s AI push.
“And as a nation ... we have taken a stand that we’ve got to embrace it,” he said ahead of an international AI summit next week in New Delhi.
Lokesh boasts the state has secured investment agreements of $175 billion involving 760 projects, including a $15 billion investment by Google for its largest AI infrastructure hub outside the United States.
And a joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries, Canada’s Brookfield and US firm Digital Realty is investing $11 billion to develop an AI data center in the same city.
Visakhapatnam — home to around two million people and popularly known as “Vizag” — is better known for its cricket ground that hosts international matches than cutting-edge technology.
But the southeastern port city is now being pitched as a landing point for submarine internet cables linking India to Singapore.
“The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius,” Lokesh said. For comparison, Taiwan is roughly 100 kilometers wide.
Lokesh said the plan goes far beyond data connectivity, adding that his state had “received close to 25 percent of all foreign direct investments” to India in 2025.
“It’s not just about the data centers,” he explained while outlining a sweeping vision of change, with Andhra Pradesh offering land at one US cent per acre for major investors.
