The arrival of Russian tourists to Spain has fallen by 83% in the first nine months of 2022 compared to the same period in 2019, from more than 1.1 million tourists to 188,076.
A large part of this significant decrease is because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
According to the government in the March-September period 156,678 Russian tourists arrived in the country, 84% less than during the same period in 2019, when 986,443 people arrived.
According to the latest records of the National Statistics Institute (INE), which also include the month of October, Spain received a total of 63.1 million international tourists in the first ten months of the year, more than twice as many as a year earlier, with an accumulated expenditure of some 76,433 million euros, 176.9% more than in the same period last year.
The main countries of origin in the first ten months of the year were the United Kingdom (13.5 million tourists and an increase of 311.4%), France (with more than 8.8 million people and an increase of 84.4%) and Germany (with almost 8.8 million and an increase of 103%).
The accumulated tourism data up to October were underpinned by the good figures for October, a month in which arrivals and spending by foreign tourists coming to Spain were already close to pre-pandemic levels.
In fact, a total of 7.2 million international visitors were recorded in that month, 94.6% of those who arrived in the same month of 2019, with these travellers spending a total of 8,296 million euros in their travel and stay, 99.7% of the records for 2019.