This Country Known For Tourism Holds Europe's Most Powerful Passport For 2025

Here's something you may not know: Not all passports are made equal. In fact, those little rectangular booklets that every traveler should know inside and out can actually differ quite a bit depending on where they're issued and where you hold citizenship. Some will get you those sought-after visa waivers in hundreds of destinations. Others, not so much. It's no new phenomenon. In fact, so-called "passport power" has been measured and ranked for over 10 years on the Passport Index run by Arton Capital. And there's one European gem that stands out very near the tip-top of the list: Spain.

Yep, of all EU countries out there, it was the home of flamenco, tapas, Don Quixote, and the world's largest number of Blue Flag beaches that scored the best. The Iberian nation came in with a jealousy-inducing (at least if you're not Spanish!) second place. That put it right alongside Singapore, and just one position lower than the UAE, which boasts the world's overall most powerful passport. According to the Passport Index's latest report, a Spanish passport gives holders visa-free access to a whopping 131 countries, with a visa on arrival available in a further 44 places around the globe.

How do these rankings work, you ask? Arton adds up the total number of countries that travelers can visit with a particular passport without having to apply for a visa, and then weighs that alongside the United Nations' Human Development Index (UNDP HDI). The outcome is a league table that elevates passports that make traveling a cinch, and then decides tied places using data on living standards, health, and education.

There's no doubt that a passport that lets you breeze into countless countries is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Spaniards can simply jet across to oodles of places and get in without having to go through that much admin whatsoever. Fancy a safari in the less-traveled African gem that is Botswana, the so-called "Elephant Capital of the World?" No problem. Prefer the white-sand beaches and tequila-sloshing colonial towns of Mexico? Easy.

But it's not all rosy. There remain some outliers; places that do ask Spanish travelers to apply for e-visas or the like while letting American citizens in without a hitch. Perhaps the most obvious example is Canada. Although U.S. travelers can waltz in with just a passport, Spanish travelers must get electronic travel authorization if they want to swim around the world's largest freshwater island or see the blue lakes and wildlife of Canada's largest national park.

Of course, there are plenty of reasons to stay in Spain, too. The sun-kissed land didn't rise to become one of Europe's most-visited spots for nothing, and the stats show over 85 million visitors chose to travel there in 2023! Hardly surprising, given that it is the home of enthralling medieval Toledo, the palm-shaded beaches of the Costa del Sol, and the rugged tops of the breathtaking Picos de Europa mountains — to name just three highlights.