Spanish Tourists in Portugal: Largest by Arrivals, Fifth by Spending, and Nights Down 5.9% Since 2023

Six ways to count Spanish visitors

Every national statistic about Spanish tourism in Portugal answers a slightly different question, and Spain's rank changes with each one. The companion piece Has the US Overtaken Spain in Portugal? found nine competing numbers for the US–Spain contest alone. For Spain on its own, six matter.

INE's tourist estimate is the broadest. It counts every non-resident who spent at least one night in Portugal, in any kind of lodging, including family homes and second homes. On that measure Spain had 7,117,700 tourists in 2025 (−0.6%), down from 7,163,600 in 2024 and up from 6,693,100 in 2023. It is the source of the "one in four" line, which was true for 2023 (25.2%) and has not been true since.

Eurostat's arrivals and nights come from the monthly survey of registered accommodation: hotels, holiday and short-stay lodging and campsites. Spain is first by arrivals and third by nights. INE's headline monthly series uses a narrower scope that leaves out campsites and small local-accommodation units. It puts Spain third by guests (2,305,500) and fourth by nights (5,170,300). The difference between the two night counts, about 480,000, is almost exactly Spain's 462,924 campsite nights. Campsites matter far more for Spain than for long-haul markets, so the choice of series moves Spain's rank more than most.

Banco de Portugal's travel receipts count every euro Spanish residents spend in Portugal, including day trips, fuel, shopping and stays in private homes. That is the widest money measure and the one where Spain ranks lowest. SIBS card data sit between the two: Spanish cards spent €685.6 million in Portugal in 2025, fourth among foreign cards, with an average payment of €31.9, the lowest of the top five markets.

None of these is wrong. A writer who says "Spain is Portugal's biggest market" and one who says "Spain is fifth" can both be quoting official data. The claims panel below sets out which statements survive and which do not.

Twenty years of Spanish demand

Spain's long-run line in Portuguese accommodation is a story of steady volume and falling share. Spanish nights roughly doubled from 2,992,326 in 2005 to 6,007,182 in 2023. Over the same period the foreign total grew faster, so Spain's share of foreign nights fell from 14.4% in 2010 to 9.4% in 2025, and its share of foreign arrivals from 21.3% to 12.2%.

Three features of the series stand out. The first is the pandemic. In 2020 and 2021 Spain's share jumped to 14.7% of foreign nights and 21.8% of arrivals, because it was the market that could still reach Portugal by road when flights stopped. When long-haul demand came back in 2022, Spain's share returned to its old trend.

The second is the 2023 peak. Spanish nights rose 8.3% in 2023 and then fell in both 2024 (−0.8%) and 2025 (−5.1%). Arrivals followed a flatter path: 2,489,869 in 2023, 2,496,095 in 2024 and 2,391,443 in 2025. The fall in 2025 was concentrated in hotels, where Spanish nights dropped from 4,369,738 to 4,142,609.

The third is the shrinking stay. A Spanish arrival meant 2.69 nights in 2012, 2.41 in 2019 and 2.36 in 2025. The foreign average fell too, from 3.87 to 3.07, but it has stayed about 0.7 nights above Spain's throughout. Spanish trips to Portugal are weekend-sized, and the data reflect it.

Inside the total, the type of lodging has shifted. Spanish nights in holiday and short-stay accommodation, Eurostat's category for most registered local accommodation, rose from 41,374 in 2012 to 844,503 in 2019 and 1,048,367 in 2025. Hotel nights fell 6.6% between 2019 and 2025. Campsite nights rose 10.4% to 462,924, or 8.2% of the Spanish total. TravelBI's 2025 profile gives hotels 65.1% of Spanish nights on INE's narrower scope, local accommodation 17.4% and aparthotels 7.2%.

Portugal is losing share of Spain's trips abroad

The supply-side data show Spain standing still in Portugal. The demand-side data show something sharper: Spaniards are travelling abroad more, and a smaller share of them are choosing Portugal.

Eurostat publishes trips by residents of Spain from the Spanish statistics office's resident travel survey (ETR). In 2019, Spanish residents made 2,355,460 trips of one night or more to Portugal, second only to France. In 2025 they made 2,222,153, a fall of 5.7%, while their trips to all foreign countries rose 12.0% to 19,174,208. Portugal's share of Spanish outbound trips fell from 13.8% to 11.6%.

The drop in 2025 was steep: trips to Portugal fell 10.5% in one year, from 2,481,972, and Italy moved into second place with 2,341,899 trips. France remained first with 2,844,494. On nights, Portugal was already third in 2025 with 10,369,412 against Italy's 14,066,061 and France's 13,504,902. Spanish nights in Portugal on this measure have fallen 7.8% since 2019 and 9.3% since 2023.

The supply-side figures from destination countries tell the same story with one caveat. Spanish nights in registered accommodation rose 29.7% in Greece and 2.0% in France between 2019 and 2025, and fell 17.3% in Germany. Italy reports a 57.7% rise, but most of it comes from a single-year jump of 2.19 million nights in 2025 that may reflect a change in Italian coverage; it should not be cited until Eurostat's metadata explain it. Across the five countries checked, Portugal's share of Spanish nights fell from 23.6% to 20.7% (derived).

The demand side also shows how much of the Spanish market the Portuguese accommodation survey misses. Spain's survey counts 10.37 million nights spent by its residents in Portugal in 2025. Portugal's survey of registered accommodation counts 5.65 million. The two surveys are designed differently, so the ratio is indicative, but it suggests that about 45% of Spanish nights in Portugal are spent outside registered lodging (derived). Spain's survey also gives a trip length of 4.67 nights, twice the 2.36 nights per registered stay. The split of 2025 trips is even: 1,123,127 trips of one to three nights and 1,099,027 of four nights or more. Visits to friends and relatives accounted for 258,994 trips and business for 156,775.

Spaniards who live in Portugal are a small part of this. AIMA counted 20,573 Spanish residents in 2023 and 22,130 in 2024, when 3,304 new residence titles went to Spanish nationals. That puts Spain outside the ten largest foreign communities in a resident population of more than 1.5 million.

Fewer nights, more money

Banco de Portugal's travel receipts from Spain have grown almost every year since 2010: €1.11 billion in 2010, €1.82 billion in 2019, €2.61 billion in 2023, €2.74 billion in 2024 and €2.84 billion in 2025. Between 2019 and 2025 they rose 55.5% while Spanish nights fell 0.8%.

Divide the receipts by registered nights and Spain's spending per night rose from €320 in 2019 to €502 in 2025, a 30.3% increase after inflation (derived, Portugal HICP). Per registered arrival it rose from €770 to €1,186. Both ratios overstate what a Spanish hotel guest spends, because the numerator includes day trips and stays in private homes and the denominator does not. They still show a market paying more each time it comes.

Per visitor, the picture reverses. Receipts per INE tourist were about €399 for Spain in 2025, against about €1,205 for the UK and about €994 for France (derived). A Spanish visit generates about a third of a British one, because it is shorter and more of it happens outside paid lodging. Card data agree: Spanish cards made 9.8% of foreign card transactions in Portugal in 2025 and 8.1% of the value. At Easter 2026, SIBS data reported by Lusa put Spain first among foreign cards, with a 21% share.

Spain is also Portugal's largest destination for spending in the other direction. Portuguese residents spent €1,722.65 million on travel in Spain in 2025, 24.1% of all Portuguese travel spending abroad. Portugal's travel surplus with Spain was €1.11 billion in 2025, up from €672 million in 2019 and €195 million in 2010. The ratio of receipts to payments rose from 1.21 in 2010 to 1.98 in 2022 and has since eased to 1.65.

2026 is the strongest year yet for Spanish spending. BPstat shows €2,139.58 million from January to August, up 6.3%, and August 2026 alone brought €604.46 million, the highest monthly figure for Spain in the series. Spanish receipts grew faster than those from the UK (+4.35%), Germany (+3.83%) and the US (+5.72%) over the same eight months.

Where Spaniards go, and when

Spaniards are the leading foreign market in most of mainland Portugal outside Lisbon and the Algarve. INE's preliminary 2025 data give Spain 24.6% of non-resident nights in the Centro, 22.5% in Oeste e Vale do Tejo, 18.2% in the Alentejo and 16.7% in the Norte, first in each. In the Península de Setúbal, Spain was first in 2024 with 18.2%.

Seen from the other side, the Norte takes the largest slice of Spanish demand: 29.9% of Spanish nights in 2025, about 1.55 million (derived). Grande Lisboa had 23.3% and the Algarve 15.9%. The Northern Portugal statistics article found that Spain's weight in the Norte is often misreported as "29% of the region's nights"; the correct figure is that the Norte holds 29.9% of Spain's nights, while Spain holds 16.7% of the Norte's foreign nights. The Centro article found Portugal's most domestic region leaning on Spain for a quarter of its foreign demand, and the Alentejo article found the same for the border region around Elvas and Évora. In the Algarve, Spain is a secondary market behind the UK.

Card data show the same geography. Of Spanish card spending in 2025, 35.7% happened in the Norte, 23.4% in Grande Lisboa, 15.5% in the Algarve and 7.9% in the Centro (TravelBI, on a €610.4 million total that differs from SIBS's own €685.6 million for unstated reasons of scope).

Origin inside Spain follows the border. TravelBI's FITUR briefing for 2026 gives Galicia 20.9% of Spanish visitors in 2024, Andalucía 20.4% and Madrid 18.2%, without naming the underlying source. By air the pattern shifts to the big cities: Madrid accounted for 34.5% of air passengers from Spain to Portugal in the year to August 2026 and Barcelona 23.3%, followed by Sevilla, Valencia and Málaga. A 2022 experimental study by the Spanish statistics office using mobile-phone data found Portugal was the first foreign destination for residents of Vigo (86.9% of their foreign trips that April) and Badajoz (94.4%).

Spanish demand is heavily concentrated in summer. On INE's monthly data, August accounted for about 20% of Spanish nights in 2025, against about 12% for foreign guests as a whole (derived from monthly releases). In August 2026 Spain held 15.6% of foreign nights, close to the UK, while its share for January to August was 9.7%. July to September brought 43.6% of Spain's 2025 receipts, up from 35.9% in 2010.

Easter moves the numbers more than anything else. When Holy Week fell in March in 2024, Spanish nights in April fell 42.5%. When it fell in April in 2025, April rose 43.0%, and INE named the calendar as the cause. In 2026 Holy Week began on 29 March and Spanish nights rose 14% in March. Monthly comparisons for Spain around Easter are close to meaningless without the calendar.

The access nobody counts

Most Spanish travel to Portugal happens on roads that no tourism statistic reads. The bilateral Observatorio Transfronterizo España-Portugal estimated 58.5 million road passenger crossings in 2019, against about 5.2 million by air and about 230,000 by rail: road carried about 91% of all cross-border movements (derived). Those figures include commuters, freight drivers and Portuguese residents, so they set an upper bound on tourism. In 2022 the main crossings carried 93,787 vehicles a day, 81,876 of them light vehicles. Light-vehicle traffic at Monte Francisco, the Guadiana bridge into the Algarve, rose 53% on 2021.

Tolls were abolished on the former SCUT motorways on 1 January 2025, including the A22 across the Algarve, the A25 from Vilar Formoso and the A28 coast road toward Galicia. Traffic on the ex-SCUT network rose 24% in the first quarter of 2025, and on the A22 by 29.8%. No published source splits that growth by Spanish or foreign plates, so any effect on Spanish visitors is unproven.

Air traffic between the two countries reached 7,369,207 passengers in 2025, up 29.1% on 2019, on Eurostat's count of passengers carried between Portuguese and Spanish airports. That includes everyone connecting through Madrid or Barcelona to somewhere else, so it measures route traffic. TravelBI counts 3.7 million passengers landing in Portugal from Spain in 2025. Lisbon–Madrid carried about 1.85 million passengers in 2025, and OAG ranked it Europe's second-busiest international route by summer 2025 seats. The two hub routes from Madrid are flat or falling, while point-to-point routes to Barcelona and the Spanish regions grow. TAP carried 27.7% of air passengers from Spain in the year to August 2026, Ryanair 21.9%, Iberia 14.8%, Air Europa 12.8% and Vueling 11.6%.

For Galicia, Porto is the gateway. Porto airport handled 16.9 million passengers in 2025, three times the 5.53 million at Galicia's three airports. Claims that one million or more Galicians fly from Porto each year are common in Galician media and have no published survey behind them.

Rail barely registers. The Celta train between Vigo and Porto carried a record 116,000 passengers in 2024 and 99,000 in 2025, and buses have replaced it between Vigo and Valença from April 2026 to April 2027 for Spanish track works. There has been no direct train between Lisbon and Madrid since March 2020. The new Évora–Elvas line is built but awaiting certification, with service now expected at the end of 2027, and passengers may still need to change at Elvas. The EU's 2025 implementing decision sets a direct service of about five hours by 2030 and high-speed trains of about three hours by 2034.

2026: the market is growing again

The decline that defined 2024 and 2025 has not continued into 2026. Spanish nights fell 1.5% in January and February, then rose 14% in March on the Easter shift, 1.9% in June, 1.6% in July and 5.0% in August, when Spain recorded 1,096,000 nights and ranked second behind the UK. April and May values for Spain were not published in the releases read for this article, so the January–August total cannot be calculated. Spain's share of foreign nights for the eight months was 9.7%, against 9.1% for 2025 as a whole on the same scope.

Forward signals are modest. Amadeus air bookings from Spain for late August 2026 to July 2027 were up 3.2% on TravelBI's market page. Spanish receipts are running 6.3% ahead of 2025. If the second half matches the first, Spain will finish 2026 above 2025 on both nights and money, but the US is close behind on nights and may pass Spain on Eurostat's campsite-inclusive count, the one series where Spain still leads. The American tourists article tracks that side of the race and the UK tourists article the market Spain trails on every measure except headcount and arrivals.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. Spanish demand shapes the calendar in the north and the interior more than anywhere else. Expect more competition for rooms in Porto, the Minho, the Centro and the Alentejo during Semana Santa, in August, and on Spanish long weekends; the rest of the year these regions are quieter than their reputation suggests. If you are coming from Spain by car, tolls are gone on the A22, A25 and parts of the A28, and there is still no direct train from Madrid to Lisbon. For a side-by-side of the two countries as destinations, see Portugal or Spain: which is better for your first Iberia trip, and for the northern gateway, the Porto travel guide.

Tourism businesses and investors. Spain is the volume base for any operator north of Lisbon or near the border, and it behaves differently from every other market: short stays, high weekend and August concentration, a large share outside hotels, a low ticket per visit and fast-rising spend per night. A hotel underwriting Spanish demand should model it on Eurostat's campsite-inclusive series and INE's monthly data together, and should treat Easter as a moving shock rather than a season. The structural risk is share loss abroad: Spaniards took 12% more foreign trips in 2025 than in 2019 and 5.7% fewer to Portugal, with Italy now ahead. The thresholds that would change the read are a second year of falling Spanish trips on Spain's own survey, Spanish nights below 5.5 million on Eurostat, or receipts growth falling under inflation.

Journalists and analysts. Safe to cite, with the measure named: 7,117,700 Spanish tourists in 2025 (23.8%, INE, all lodging); 2,391,443 arrivals and 5,653,900 nights in registered accommodation including campsites (Eurostat); 2,305,500 guests and 5,170,300 nights excluding campsites (INE headline, TravelBI); €2,836.3 million in receipts (Banco de Portugal, current BPstat vintage), fifth among markets; 2,222,153 trips by Spanish residents to Portugal, third behind France and Italy (Eurostat tour_dem). Do not repeat "one in four tourists is Spanish" as current, the €2.9 billion receipts figure for 2025, a 5.1-night average stay, "35.7% of Norte card spending", the claim that Portugal is the Spaniards' second destination, or any count of Galicians at Porto airport. The series finding this article adds is that the headline "largest market" is a headcount artefact: Spain is heavily undercounted by accommodation statistics and thinly captured per visit by receipts, and Banco de Portugal's own Spain series has moved by about €100 million a year between vintages without a note we could find.