New record of visitors to Spain in first 11 months

MADRID, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- 77.8 million foreign tourists visited Spain in the first 11 months of the year, according to data published by the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE) on Thursday.

The figure is 9.1 percent up on the same period in 2016, and means Spain has already beaten the previous 12-month record for foreign tourists, which was 75.6 million last year.

November saw 4.4 million foreigners visit Spain, with 28.2 percent of them visiting the Canary Islands, 22.4 percent going to Catalonia and 13 percent to the southern region of Andalusia.

Britons continue to be most numerous visitors to Spain, with 18 million visitors from the UK between January and November, while 11.4 million Germans have spent holidays in Spain, along with 10.7 million French.

There has also been a large rise in the number of Scandinavian tourists, with a 14.6 increase on 2016, taking the number to 5.45 million. Enditem