The number of foreign visitors to Spain rose for the second year in a row in 2011, helped by a surge in tourists from its main market Britain, provisional government figures showed Tuesday.
The country welcomed 56.9 million foreign tourists last year, an 8.1 percent increase over 2010, Tourism Minister Jose Manuel Soria told a news conference.
Britain accounted for the biggest jump in arrivals, with the number of visitors from the country up 9.1 percent.
The number of arrivals from Germany, the second most important source of tourists to Spain, rose 3.0 percent last year.
Tourism has been one of the few bright spots in the Spanish economy, which has been battered by high unemployment and sluggish growth since the collapse of a property bubble in 2008.
In 2010 Spain received 52.6 million foreign visitors, a rise of 1.0 percent over the previous year and its first increase since 2007.
Spain’s tourism sector, which accounts for about 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, had struggled with the emergence of cheaper sunshine destinations in the eastern Mediterranean.
But it benefited early last year as unrest in rival sunspots such as Tunisia and Egypt caused tourists to switch back to Spain, and an economic recovery in Germany and other key markets prompted more holidays.
Spain is the world’s fourth most-visited country, after France, the United States and China, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.
