Madrid attack doesn't scare off tourists

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MADRID, April 22 (UPI) -- The terrorist bomb attacks in Madrid on March 11 made no dent in the flow of foreign visitors to the Spanish capital, El Pais reported Thursday.

Latest figures for tourists visiting Madrid in March showed an increase of 23.7 percent from a year earlier, the paper said quoting the Spanish Ministry of Tourism.

This indicated that the feared rush of cancellations by nervous tourists reacting to the terrorist attacks did not in fact take place, a tourism official told United Press International Thursday.

The rate of growth was the same as for the first quarter of the year as a whole when the number of foreigners spending time in Madrid rose 25 percent to 898,000. The number of tourist arrivals in Spain in March was practically unchanged at 3.3million, El Pais reported,