The statistic comes from the European Central Bank's study on Cash Use by Household in the Euro Area, published in November 2017.
The report presents estimations of the number and value of cash transactions in all 19 euro area countries in 2016, based on survey result as well as figures on main payments by demographic.
According to the findings from the European Central Bank's report, 42% of Spaniards say they prefer to use cash (ECB, 2017).
"On average 43% of respondents in the euro area said they would prefer to pay by card or by another non-cash method of payment if given the choice, while only 32% would choose to pay in cash (Chart 36). A quarter of the respondents reported having no preferred method of payment. These results are in contrast with the actual use of cash and non-cash methods presented in earlier chapters, which show that 79% of all POS payments were carried out using cash." (p. 52)
