Merchant ship calls at Spanish ports in 2015: the year in review

Spanish ports received 146,732 merchant ship calls in 2015, 5.8% more than in 2014 (8,027 merchant ship calls more). This is the year-end balance according to Puertos del Estado’s monthly statistics, with December data for the 28 port authorities.

The high point of the 2012–2025 series is 2019, with 170,944 merchant ship calls: 2015 was 14.2% below it and ranks 9th of the 14 years with data. At the end of 2015 it was the highest figure in the series, which starts in 2012; it was later exceeded in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.

In the 2015 ranking, the ports moving up on 2014 are Las Palmas (from 5th to 4th) and Cartagena (from 11th to 10th); those moving down are Ceuta (from 4th to 5th). The top three positions are unchanged.

Baleares ranks first among port authorities with 40,596 merchant ship calls in 2015 (14.8% more than in 2014). It is followed by Bahía de Algeciras (28,446 merchant ship calls) and Santa Cruz de Tenerife (12,127 merchant ship calls). Together, the three account for 55.3% of the total.

The largest increases were recorded by Baleares (+14.8%), Las Palmas (+9.9%) and Vigo (+9.5%); the steepest falls by Ceuta (−7.7%) and Bilbao (−1.6%). The comparison is limited to port authorities that account for at least 1% of the total, so that an extreme swing at a small player does not distort the picture.

The rest of the top ten are Las Palmas (4th, 11,701 merchant ship calls, +9.9%), Ceuta (5th, 10,306 merchant ship calls, −7.7%), Barcelona (6th, 8,046 merchant ship calls, +2.7%), Valencia (7th, 7,728 merchant ship calls, +4.9%), Bilbao (8th, 2,816 merchant ship calls, −1.6%), Tarragona (9th, 2,743 merchant ship calls, +2.5%) and Cartagena (10th, 1,862 merchant ship calls, +3.6%).

At the bottom of the table are Avilés (806 merchant ship calls), Marín y Ría de Pontevedra (585 merchant ship calls) and Vilagarcía (268 merchant ship calls), out of a total of 28 port authorities with data.

The distribution is highly concentrated: the top five account for 70.3% of the total and 7 port authorities are enough to reach 80%, while the other 18 port authorities further down share the remaining 13.9%. 22 of the 28 port authorities with a comparison grew compared with 2014, 1 of them by double digits, and 6 fell.

Of the 12 months of 2015 with data, 10 are above the same month of 2014 and 2 below; over the last three months (October, November, December) the figure is up 39.5% on the same months of 2014; the largest year-on-year difference was in December (up 94.9%); the highest point in the series was December, at 20,190, and the lowest February, at 8,922.

Between 2012 and 2015 the figure went from 133,582 to 146,732, an increase of 9.8% over 3 years (+3.2% a year on average); the last year is the high point of the series and the low was 2013 (130,170).

Every month Puertos del Estado counts the merchant ships calling at each port authority: container ships, bulk carriers, tankers, ro-ro vessels, ferries and cruise ships. A call is one entry into port, so a scheduled ferry adds many calls a month. The number of calls measures a port’s service activity (pilotage, mooring, towage, stevedoring); ship size is measured separately, in gross tonnage (GT).

Puertos del Estado. To explore the data in detail, use PortStats · ships by port or see the original source.