The tourism industry in Spain 2026: WHAT IS THE REAL SITUATION TODAY OF ITS EXISTENCE, SURVIVAL, AND COEXISTENCE

May 31, 2026 Traveller Times

By José Aleixandre Caballero

I reflect and I realize that “the gear” of the operational functional system of our tourism industry is obsolete… infrastructures, structures, business concepts and the system… Along with the lack of training and professionalism. It fills me with questions (????) to see that after more than 50 years fighting to consolidate and build loyalty for our tourism business, considered a “good”… a major engine of the National economy and social well-being… today the terrible danger of detachment looms over it from an important part of the residents of towns and cities, which is turning it in many places in Spain into the “culprit” of economic instability, due to the lack of affordable housing and the increase in the cost of living, services and consumption that we natives suffer…. Is it the enemy causing speculation and the exaggerated rise in the cost of living???? …partly yes… perhaps more as a trigger than as a cause, but…. I would like to invite the government ministers and the entities responsible for the macro Spanish tourism business to analyze it… I beg them to take the problem seriously and begin to reverse the almost chaotic situation close to “dying of success”… I invite them to see how our infrastructures and facilities are aged, exhausted and overwhelmed… That public services are literally “drowning” in many cities and towns, causing serious service problems with consequences for life and coexistence between citizens, tourists, and seasonal staff in Spanish tourist destinations… and by extension for all Spanish citizens in general… seriously… it’s not a trivial matter, it is serious enough to become aware, reflect and act… I think what is happening is produced by an “excess” of confidence in constant success… In the idea that “everything works”… We have “patched” the problems instead of sizing the “country” according to its growth to solve it… without clear forecasts for adequate future demographic expansions to house natives and provide quality services to a tourism industry in constant growth…

The lack of action is leading us to the critical situation we live due to the intrinsic fragility of a business like Tourism… it has been many years that we have been growing in million-dollar figures both in income and in number of inhabitants and traveler visitors… That despite the unfavorable contingencies that have occurred, external to our country in a periodic and constant way that have affected it during the last 40 years… even so its growth has not stopped… thereby affecting the use through consumption and global wear of the organizational structures of general services until turning them into expensive and deficient… substantially affecting everything that surrounds the tourism industry, whose hotel and hospitality sectors always try to improve on the issues that concern them… having managed to survive with relative success at the cost of deterioration in their quality and services.

Now it seems that we boast once again about a great “success”… I read that according to forecasts for 2026… we are going to exceed 100 million tourist arrivals…

However, I neither see our government nor the hospitality sector worrying about those big and obvious “country” structural defects in public and private services that deeply affect a high percentage of tourism businesses and their quality… especially accommodations in their relationship of services by category and number of stars, which due to lack of inspections, and review of categories along with the wear and aging of their facilities and unfair competition are leading the sector to an uncertain future and to the deterioration of the reputation of our image.

The sustained increase in the cost of living as a consequence of the uncontrolled freedom of consumer prices is a serious economic problem due to incompatibility with the salary level for both sector workers and resident neighbors… who have become direct victims of the situation created by indiscriminate and excessive speculation that has generated businesses outside the law, leaving the resident national tenant miserably defenseless, priced out of the market without being able to face indignantly unbearable expenses…

It seems that only we “old people” are the intolerant critics of the neglect of political regimes… We are perhaps the ones who have memory to remember, without losing dignity to live the present… but with the clear and current vision of an immediate future that is not promising… for anyone… (neither residents nor tourists) We must preserve coexistence and the solution is mostly in the hands of the government.

Most cities and towns in Spain are tourist destinations, which experienced between 1986-2015 times of “joy” in well-being and evolutionary coexistence, and unless I’m very wrong, the big push came for us between ’92/2000. Back then in Spain we lived about 35/37 million Spaniards and the country’s structures in services, security, private transport, communications, housing, public transport and consumer goods etc. balanced more or less successfully with the number of inhabitants…. Today in our country we are already 50 million resident Spaniards… and we lack “everything”… we lack general structural services, public transport, healthcare, security, infrastructures, roads and housing…

The increase in cost due to excess demand along with the speculation that entails the rise in prices regarding food and accommodation is already today unaffordable for the working native… moreover we lack capacity and frequency in public transport, there is lack of security in the streets, the health system fails due to being insufficient, general services of essential supplies water, electricity etc. fail…

In short, we have a “rich but sleeping Nation” based on the concept of an ideal “state” created for 1992 that was redesigned in 1986….

Let us remember the year 2002 with the disappearance of the peseta and the implementation of the Euro… that year Spaniards had our purchasing power lowered by almost 67% due to the currency change Peseta/€… and we said goodbye to our well-being… that’s when the big gap for base wage earners began!! and we swallowed it without blinking…!!! Until now Spaniards have held on and we continue to be the first link harmed and sacrificed… we are far… further and further away… from decent purchasing power. And the constant economic setback leads us to situations of difficult coexistence with the tourism world that we begin to see as an invader… enemy causing our ills… are we close to enough??

Graphic Courtesy: Central Bureau of Statistics

We have a Spain that adapted to its present about 38/40 years ago… and although we have continued growing it is obvious that we have not done it all well, nor all that was necessary on the part of our rulers,

In 1986 we were about 38.6 million Spaniards and about 43.3 million travelers visited us.

Today we are talking about 50 million resident Spaniards with the forecast of receiving 100 million tourist travelers… I think it is easy to realize that we must take urgent measures…. the structural stress is at the country level, and we Spaniards suffer it… “patient resident neighbors” and it is already more than evident… That the situation is critically unbearable… after almost forty years of use… aging and wear have stressed buildings and left infrastructures outside their adequate capacities… and soon obsolete….

Many hotels, accommodations and tourism businesses have aged, airports lacking services and spaces with decent capacity, depressing, poorly maintained roads and highways with excess traffic, obsolete railways with tracks, stations and services in very poor condition, road and city public transport services, insufficient and with few frequencies, deficient city cleaning services, security in question, public health services stressed and collapsed…. our “pants are tearing” and we only look at one fixed point… one hundred million tourists in sight!!!…. We don’t want to see reality…! we think it doesn’t concern us or that it’s not our problem… we don’t see how countries like Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador or Panama, etc. are growing spectacularly improving on our offer….

I’m afraid to ask myself for fear of the irremediable answer that the helplessness that invades me grants: Why?… I read that hotels are being sold in Spain, that many businesses are closing, that Restaurants and Bars cannot pay rents or decent wages… that destroyed purchasing power has made the middle class disappear… There’s also no need to be alarmed if survival is what awaits us… we will do it once again for sure…. The future is always full of hope.