[hunterpayne]

The article is a mix of facts and figures on the supply side. However, the real reason for the current cheap prices is the lack of demand. Spain's economy isn't doing well and they have hurt their tourism industry with politics. That's most of the reason for the temporarily cheap power that they mostly import from their neighbor. Being dishonest about their energy policy is pure politics.

[tzs]

How have they hurt tourism? According to the data here [1] tourism has been going up every year since 1996 except for a moderate hit during the 2008 recession and a big hit during COVID.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Spain

[cheema33]

> Spain's economy isn't doing well and they have hurt their tourism industry with politics.

I don't live in Spain. And this is the first I have heard about their politics keeping tourists away. Can you elaborate?

[troad]

There have been protests against tourism in Spanish cities, esp. Barcelona.

As always, the protests are really about local issues (lack of housing, jobs, etc) and foreigners are being scapegoated. A lot of this has a dark edge - e.g. locals spraying water on people that appear foreign to them. The framing around sustainability and 'over-tourism' allows the far left to get in on the xenophobia that's been so useful to the far right. Much easier to attack foreigners than actually come up with solutions to deliver more housing or jobs.

Media narratives aside, these incidents have not affected tourism at all. Spain is and continues to be a massive tourism destination, and the average tourist has never even heard of any of this.

[randochatter]

You should correct this article, they don't know Spain's tourism is in shambles either. https://apnews.com/article/spain-record-foreign-tourists-5aa...

[throwaway_2626]

Spain's energy policy could easily be improved, but saying that Spain's economy isn't doing well is disingenuous. In terms of GDP, it's one of the countries with the fastest growth in the EU [1].

Also, our economy is becoming more diversified, precisely thanks to lower energy prices that attract industries that previously gravitated towards Germany and Eastern Europe. [2]

I'm curious about how politics have hurt tourism industry, though, if you could elaborate.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/stellantis-chinas-leapmo...

[zdragnar]

It's easy to win the fastest growing award when it has been doing so poorly before. Youth unemployment is at a near twenty year low of 24%, down from recent years around 30%.

As for politics hurting tourism, there's some formal policies restricting airbnbs and placing higher tourism related taxes on over-encumbered areas, but I think most of the detraction is the anti-tourism protests from locals, which were quite large in 2024-2025. You'd have to consider local sentiment as "politics" for the statement to really be true, I think.

[BonitaPersona]

The GDP is growing simply because the population is growing massively. This is such a low-quality measurement driven by government propaganda. Quality of life, GDP per capita, and plenty of other measurements are needed to actually evaluate how an economy is going.

And Spain's economy is far, very far away from "going like a rocket", like your misinformation echo-chamber tries to parrot.

[tpm]

> The GDP is growing simply because the population is growing massively.

Per capita GDP is growing too, so this is simply wrong.