El turismo en la economía española: evolución histórica y contribulación en la producción, el empleo y la balanza de pagos.

According to the Annual Report 2015 of the Worldwide Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), Spain is the third country of the world in number of foreign tourists, only surpassed by France and United States of America (USA). Furthermore, Spain is the second nation in the world in incomes from tourism, only behind USA. Since the 50’s up to the current moment, there have been several changes in the Spanish Tourism, passing of being an activity focused on the elites to its current industrialization, as a reaction to the ¨mass tourism¨ that started in the 60’s. Tourism has become a strategic activity of the Spanish economy. This can be appreciated when its contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP), employment and balance of payments is analysed. More than half a century of tourism experience allows to get enough knowledge to distinguish what should be done and what should not be done in tourism in the future years. In this way, it is needed to pay close attention to this wide experience in order to maintain tourism as an important source of generating incomes in the long term. This piece of work will try to summarise the main features of tourism all over the years and to make it clear why it is possible to talk about an ¨important contribution to the Spanish economy¨ when talking about tourism