Art lovers flock to the eurozone's crisis capitals Malcolm Campbell, a weatherbeaten vocational trainer from the remote Pilbara region of north-west Australia, had never heard of the Prado when he and his wife Margaret stumbled across Spain's most famous art collection in central Madrid on Friday. "We came to Spain to get a different culture," the 55-year-old said at the start of a three-month holiday made more affordable by the strength of the Australian dollar. The Iberian economies may be in the dumps because of the eurozone's sovereign debt crisis, but never has Madrid's "golden triangle" of art museums welcomed so many visitors from near and far. The Prado, the Reina Sofía (home of Picasso's Guernica, which takes as its subject the civil war bombing of that town in 1937) and the Thyssen-Bornemisza each received a record number of visitors last year amid an upturn in the Spanish tourism industry: 2.9m, 2.7m and 1.1m respectively. Construction and banking are mired in recession and crisis, but the number of tourists coming to Spain rose 8 per cent last year to nearly 57m, says the ministry of industry, energy and tourism. The surge is partly due to political upheaval in north Africa, which deterred holidaymakers who might otherwise have gone in search of the sun to Tunisia or Egypt. Lisbon, the capital of neighbouring Portugal, is also profiting from an influx of cultural tourists attracted by the warm climate, political stability, low crime rates and competitive prices - as little as €300 for a return flight from Munich and four nights in a hotel. Visitors from Europe and the US basked in warm sunshine on Friday as they enjoyed views of Lisbon and the Tagus river from the battlements of São Jorge's Castle, the city's most popular tourist attraction. Cilla Lundberg, from Innsbruck, Austria, said that to find a "politically safe" country to visit had been an important consideration when she looked online for a warm holiday destination. According to consultants Roland Berger Strategy, Lisbon ranks second after Amsterdam as the European capital with both the biggest growth in overnight stays duirng the past five years and the most overnight stays relative to the number of inhabitants - 6.2m in 2010 for a population of about 1m. While the Portuguese economy is estimated to have contracted 1.6 per cent in 2011 and is expected to shrink 3.1 per cent this year - the country's worst recession in half a century - the number of foreign visitors to Lisbon increased by 9.1 per cent during the first 10 months of 2011 compared with the same period the previous year. The Jerónimos Monastery, another leading attraction, and the Museu do Chiado art museum have registered increases in visitor numbers of 7.4 per cent and 26.1 per cent during a similar period. More than three years of economic crisis are nevertheless taking their toll. Miguel Zugaza, director of the state-owned Prado in Madrid, says the government subsidy for the museum and its large collection of works by Velázquez, Goya, Rubens and others is to be cut by 30 per cent between 2010 and 2013 as part of a nationwide austerity drive. Even with nearly 3m visitors a year, most of them foreigners, he has to find ways to plug the hole in the museum's €42m annual budget. Half is currently paid by the state. "The only response is to generate more activity," said Mr Zugaza, who has recently discontinued the tradition of Monday closing and now oversees a seven-day-a-week operation. It's not something surprising for the British or the Dutch to open every day - but for us it's a novelty. Outside, a group of South Korean students on a month-long backpacking tour of Europe said the Prado they were about to enter was one of the continent's big three museum attractions, with the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in London. I love Spain. People have passion," says 20-year-old Kim Seung-su, one of the camera-toting students at the doors of the Prado.