At a meeting of the UN World Tourism Organization's executive council in Madrid on Tuesday, Pedro Sánchez said that he was "convinced" that once 70% of the population had been vaccinated, Spain would be "progressively" better prepared to receive foreign tourists.
"The government is working on vaccinating at the greatest possible rate. Spain is in fact the ninth country in the world in terms of vaccination and one of the leaders in Europe." The seventy per cent of population will have been vaccinated, the prime minister anticipated, by the end of the summer.
Crises, he stated, are opportunities for transformations, for a more sustainable tourism sector that is rooted in the environment and which respects the diversity and identity of each place. The tourism of the future, Sánchez observed, will be inspired by digitalisation, ecology, diversity, equality and sustainable development goals. It will be a model for "generating prosperity, conserving the environment and preserving traditions and history".
The 2021 budget, he explained, has allocated 660 million euros to tourism sector sustainability plans, 150 million euros for the rehabilitation of properties for tourism use, 64 million for digital transformation of the sector and 46 million euros for "resilience strategy" in destinations such as the Balearics and the Canaries. Including funds from the European Recovery Plan, tourism will receive 3,400 million euros.