Friday, 12 September 2025, 16:10
How many residents from Malaga province went on holiday in July and which destinations did they choose? These are two questions answered by a study conducted by the Spain’s INE national statistics institute and published this week. The experimental study uses the signal location data of mobile phones to map out where people go on holiday to relax or for sightseeing. The study reveals that 365,213 people from Malaga went on holiday in July and stayed within Spain’s borders, compared to the 82,233 who packed their bags and crossed the border on overseas trips, but still mostly within the European continent.
For Malaga province residents who did not venture over the country’s borders, the favourite destination was the neighbouring province of Cadiz: 95,746 Malaga residents went there in July. In second place, but far behind in terms of preference and visitor numbers, was Granada, which was chosen by 46,744 residents of Malaga. Then, in third place, a destination for inland tourism, with plenty of culture and shopping, the state capital of Madrid, with around 35,500 visitors from Malaga. This was followed by five other Andalusian provinces: 25,400 people from Malaga visited Seville in July, 23,734 headed to Almeria, just over 22,300 to Cordoba, 13,665 to Jaen and in Huelva there were more than 10,000 tourists from Malaga.
Also among the top ten destinations are the Balearic Islands, with 9,641 tourists from Malaga in July, while Barcelona welcomed 8,741 visitors from the Costa del Sol province. Together with Madrid, these are the exceptions, as seven of the top ten holiday destinations for visitors from Malaga are within the region of Andalucía.
The INE’s experimental statistics, which use the data captured by mobile phone antennas to measure population movements, recognises some limitations to its methodology. For example, it is possible for a person to travel with two or more handsets, so can therefore be counted two or more times. Another possibility is that the tourist in question keeps their handset disconnected during the entire trip or has it connected to a SIM card in the destination country, so it would go undetected by the Spanish operator.
Favourite locations
Despite all these caveats, the INE can also drill down into the data from the provincial to the municipal level to see which are the most popular places visited in July by tourists from Malaga. First to appear in this ranking is Madrid, with 24,452 visitors, followed by the Cadiz provinces municipalities of Tarifa (16,191) and Conil de la Frontera (10,837). Next come the provincial capitals of Seville and Granada, with 10,257 and 9,426 visitors from Malaga respectively.
Barbate, Chiclana de la Frontera and Vejer de la Frontera, all in Cadiz, as well as Almuñécar in Granada and Roquetas de Mar in Almeria complete the top ten of the most visited municipalities by Malaga residents during the month of July. So, with the sole exception of Madrid, the favourite places for Malaga residents to spend this July are all in Andalucía and all are beach resorts.
International destinations
As for the Malaga residents who chose other countries for their July break, the most preferred country was Portugal, favoured by over 15,700 Malaga residents. Next was France with more than 10,500 Malaga residents. In third place was Italy (8,975), followed by the United Kingdom (8,325). Morocco (5,401), Germany (4,672), Gibraltar (3,310), the Netherlands (2,360), Greece (1,718) and Belgium (1,673) complete the list of the ten favourite international destinations for Malaga residents on their summer break. Most of these are European countries and many of them border with Spain.
Moving from Malaga to nationwide, Portugal is also the top destination, with more than 856,000 visitors in July, followed by France (778,100) and then, well behind, Italy, with almost 308,000 tourists from Spain.
The INE’s experimental study also shows how many tourists arrived in Malaga in July along with their country or place of origin. Almost 730,000 visitors came from other parts of Spain to Malaga province in July. The main source location was Cordoba province with 125,239, followed by Madrid with almost 120,000, then Seville with over 98,000. After that, the main visitor sources were Granada, Cadiz, Jaen and Almeria.
In terms of visitors from other provinces, Cadiz beat the Costa del Sol, because in July the Costa de la Luz province had an intake of more than 938,000 tourists, mainly from Seville, Madrid and Malaga itself.
There is no information available yet on foreign tourist arrivals for the month of July. The last data published is from June: in that month, Malaga welcomed nearly 742,000 visitors of foreign origin, the majority – 204,281 – from the United Kingdom, followed by 66,145 from Ireland and more than 58,500 from the Netherlands.