MADRID, May 6. /TASS/. The number of foreign tourists who visited Spain in March 2021 amounted to just over 490,000, which is 75.5% less than in the same period in 2020, the National Statistics Institute announced on Thursday.
The majority of visitors from abroad came from France (around 110,000 people). The total outlays of foreigners visiting Spain in March reached 513 mln euro, down 76.4% from the same month last year.
In 2020, due to the blanket lockdowns over the spread of coronavirus having been imposed, about 19 mln foreigners visited the Iberian country, which is 77.3% less than a year earlier. Tourist spending in Spain in the 12 months of 2020 exceeded 19.7 bln euro, which is 78.5% less than in 2019.
Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in Spain, more than 3.5 mln cases have been reported, and over 78,700 patients have died. At the end of October 2020, the Spanish government reintroduced a heightened state of emergency in the country, which was extended until May 9, 2021.
In late December 2019, Chinese officials informed the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.