Will August cease to be the month of holidays?

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of August? Surely holidays! For decades, August has established itself as the month of holidays par excellence. Because of the worship given to sun and beach, as well as because the school or work calendar forces a break. In recent times, however, August's holiday hegemony is being blurred by societal evolution. Progressive aging, not having children, and changes in customs – teleworking or the desire to avoid heatwaves, seek lower prices or less crowding – mean that more and more people are not forced to take their holidays in August.How the tourists arriving in Catalonia are distributed throughout the year is a paradigm of this change. According to data provided by the Catalan Tourism Agency, the two most touristy months of the year – in Catalonia's case, July and August – with which the seasonality of a destination is calculated, have lost momentum since the pandemic was overcome. In 2020 – the most atypical year due to covid – these two months accounted for 28.98% of tourists and in 2021, 29.04%, but since then the concentration has progressively fallen to 23.74% in 2025, when 12.3% of tourists arrived in August and 11.4% in July.If we delve into the 2025 data, the transformation experienced in national tourism stands out. While among foreign tourists, August (12.8%) and July (11.8%) still lead by a significant margin as the months with the most visits, the fact is that among Catalans, June (12.6%) has made the overtaking in August (12.4%) and in the case of tourists from the rest of Spain, July (10.4%) and June (10.3%) have also positioned themselves ahead of August (9.5%). Furthermore, January, February and March are also gaining attractiveness for tourists from all origins, even though for decades sun and beach in the summer has been one of the main attractions for visiting Catalonia and the rest of Spain.So, if August stops being the month for making money with tourism, does the expression 'fer l'agost' (making August) applied to the tourism sector risk becoming history? It is difficult for such a radical change to occur, for beaches to suddenly empty in August as happens in the colder months, because summer – and August in particular – are strongly linked with the idea of taking holidays, highlights Saida Palou Rubio, who is a doctor in social and cultural anthropology and an aggregate professor in the Department of History and Art History at the UdG. Nevertheless, the circumstances are such that little by little, tourism will not be as concentrated in August as before.

Why do we take holidays in August?

The craze for taking holidays on the coast in August is less than a century old, according to Palou. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the wealthy classes already bathed in the sea, but they did so in cold waters for health reasons, such as in the Atlantic. This practice was linked to the hygienist theories of the time, which advocated leaving the infectious centers of urban areas. Even a Mediterranean city like Barcelona was promoted at the beginning of the 20th century with the slogan "Barcelona, city of winter" to attract wealthy European tourists eager to escape their harsh winters and at the same time to take advantage of their stay to mingle with the local bourgeoisie.In the twenties and thirties of the 20th century, the shift occurred: the sea became an increasingly popular place for leisure and rest, tanning became fashionable, and the warm waters of the Mediterranean dethroned the cold ones. "In the thirties, the sea is already summer, many tourists arrive in the Mediterranean, cold-water beaches lose value," relates Palou, but this is not the only reason why holidays have concentrated in August, adds Daniel Imbert-Bouchard Ribera, who directs the Research Group in Tourism, Culture and Territory (TURCiT) of CETT-UB: the forced break due to the dynamics of industries, harvests, school holidays, and visits to the village around the festival of August 15th also plays a significant role.The rise of tourism was unstoppable due to the changes that occurred in Europe after World War II, with the recognition of the right to leisure and paid holidays in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the progressive extension of paid holiday periods, the transport revolution, and policies such as the Spanish desarrollismo". In its early days, the Franco dictatorship "was very afraid of tourism" – recalls Palou – because foreign visitors could bring airs of freedom, but later "it promoted it and took advantage of it" to balance the balance of payments and sanitize its external image.Change will not be for everyone

With summer and August in particular consecrated as the time for holidays, experts agree that it is difficult for there to be a new turn of events as a century ago, but it is true that for many people it is over that everyone does the same thing in August and that it is time to spend the month at the beach in turn. According to Imbert-Bouchard, for now August maintains its reign as the month of holidays "by cultural drag", because the children do not have school or by the custom of returning to the village to visit family around August 15th, but it will be eroded little by little: "It will not disappear as the hegemonic month, but the concentration of workers taking holidays in August will be reduced" and they will be more fragmented throughout the year.Among the reasons to avoid August, Imbert-Bouchard cites the little comfort that increasingly hot spells can cause in certain destinations, prohibitive prices, the flexibility that teleworking has introduced, and, above all, that the elderly and young people – or not so young – without children are not forced to travel in August. For his part, Palou emphasizes that the trend in tourism is "the diversity of trends" and not everyone will do the same thing nor are the same dynamics valid everywhere. "The coast will not make this turn," assures Palou, as it remains very tied to sun and beach, but in urban or inland destinations he sees more options because "this seasonality is not so marked and August does not have to rule."By now, de-seasonalization is a reality and the efforts to achieve it "are bearing fruit", claims the Director General of Tourism of the Generalitat, Cristina Lagé, something she celebrates because tourism must also be socially sustainable. "It means that the 500,000 people who work in the tourism sector can make a life project and work in their job all year round", she emphasizes. She also explains that, when traveling, "before the most important thing was the destination and now it's what happens there", so that even people who like sun and beach "are looking for something more to do". Therefore, Lagé is also of the opinion that "August will lose some of its strength, because there is no need to travel when you have holidays, but rather you can adapt your holidays to the moment that suits you best".