Foreign travellers poured into temperate northern Spain this summer as scorching temperatures on the southern coast raised questions about the effect of climate change on tourism in the heartland of the Mediterranean beach holiday.

The northern regions of Galicia, Asturias and Cantabria — long perceived as too rainy for summer breaks — recorded a huge jump in the number of international tourists in August, which rose 47 per cent from a year ago to 435,500.

Although visitor numbers remained higher in southern regions including Andalusia and Valencia, where growth was modest, the boom in the north coincided with a spate of extreme temperature warnings in the south and heat fatigue among some tourists.

After years of predictions about hot places becoming unbearable and cold places becoming more agreeable, Spain is already showing how climate change could redraw the map — and alter the calendar — of European tourism.

“The north of Spain is rising,” said Alberto Terol, an entrepreneur and hotelier who is on the board of real estate company GMP.

An undulating region of coves, estuaries and winding coastal roads, he recalls summers in the north 20 years ago when it was “raining, raining, raining all the time”. The precipitation has not vanished, but today the weather “is milder, warmer; the water in the ocean is also warmer than it used to be”, he said.

At the same time prices remain relatively affordable — both for real estate and the region’s highly rated cuisine — at least away from the Basque country and Santander, the well-heeled capital of Cantabria.

“As you move to the west, to Asturias and Galicia, prices get lower, which is why a lot of people are now looking for properties in Galicia in particular,” Terol said.

Decisions about where to holiday seem trivial set against the threats climate change poses to agriculture, water supplies and public health. But if rising temperatures force southern Spain to overhaul its tourism model the consequences for the country are profound given its economic dependence on the sector.

Spain is the second-most visited country in the world after France, logging 72mn international tourist arrivals in 2022 and ranking just ahead of the US, according to World Tourism Organization data. Tourism accounts for 12-13 per cent of Spain’s gross domestic product.

The northern trend includes Spanish holiday makers too. Carmen Mendiburu, a student and coffee barista, spent summer holidays as a child in Almería in the south, but this year opted for the northern coast. “Living in Madrid where the amount of trees is minimal and it gets to 40 degrees, I didn’t really feel like going to the south to die of heat even more,” she said.

The single largest group of foreign tourists in Spain are Britons, followed by the French then Germans.

Galicia’s regional government said it was seeing “very significant growth” in the numbers of international visitors, who account for 30 per cent of all tourism. It was keen to sell all the region’s attractions — nature, boating, wine tourism — but noted: “It is true that the weather is favourable in the summer, when temperatures are particularly pleasant.”

The southern coast, by contrast, was this year hit by a series of brutal heatwaves.

In the seaside provinces of Andalusia, whose traditional Costa del Sol tourist magnets include Málaga, Marbella and Torremolinos, Spain’s meteorological agency issued 63 severe heat warnings in August, which were triggered when coastal temperatures hit 39C. It also issued six extreme heat warnings, made when seaside temperatures reach 42C, according to data compiled by Dominic Royé, head of data science at the Climate Research Foundation.

Investors and property executives are not predicting doom for the southern tourism industry, which took off internationally in the 1960s during a “Spain is different” ad campaign launched by the Franco dictatorship. But in the long term they say the south must adapt to fewer visitors in the hottest months and promise “winter sun” to woo people with more favourable temperatures over the rest of the year.

“What can happen is a change in the seasonality,” said Iñigo Molina, director of the Andalusia office of property company Colliers. “Already it’s been a long time since anybody played golf here in the middle of the day in the summer. Only the craziest. The golfers are here from September to May.”

Two years ago, the government said in a landmark long-term strategy report that the travel industry would need to “reformulate” to adjust to climate-driven changes in tourism “across both time and territory”.

But not everyone sees change as inevitable. Andalusia still attracted 1.4mn foreign visitors in August, up 11 per cent from a year ago, according to the national statistics institute. Ramón Estalella, secretary-general of CEHAT, a holiday accommodation trade group, said hotel occupation rates were at record highs in the south. “There’s one thing that’s curious. It’s 45 degrees and you see a beach full of people. And not under parasols. They’re sunbathing,” he said.

Pryconsa, a developer, is building new properties in Huelva, an Atlantic-facing part of Andalucia where temperatures are less extreme. But it is also constructing 100 potential second homes close to a beach in Asturias — priced from €255,000 for three bedrooms — in its biggest bet yet on the region.

“There is very strong momentum in the north,” said José Román Blanco Álvarez, its promotions director. “We see more projects like this in areas where you have the right environment, scenery, and the infrastructure links.” The north’s lack of crowds was another attraction, he noted. But that may be about to change.

Data visualisation by Chris Campbell and Steve Bernard. Additional reporting by Carmen Muela