Ukrainian refugees found shelter in Spain’s empty hotels. Until tourists came back.

When the Russian invasion of Ukraine sent millions of refugees scrambling for shelter across Europe, some were offered an unlikely sanctuary: beach resorts in Spain, one of the continent’s most popular tourist destinations. For nonprofits and governments trying to accommodate hundreds of families every day, empty hotels came in handy. This also provided some economic relief to an ailing tourism industry following years of travel disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Alan Ruiz Terol reports from the Spanish beach town of Calella about what happens when the tourists come back.