Public prosecutors had called for him to be jailed for 14 years if found guilty of the sex attack at the start of his trial in October but ended up lowering their prison demand to six years during the hearing.
Three judges sitting without a jury at the Provincial Court in the Tenerife capital Santa Cruz have now handed him the six-year sentence after taking time out to consider their verdict.
The tourist had become separated from her boyfriend following a row after a boozy night out in the Playa de Las Americas resort in the south of the holiday island when she was targeted. She was rushed to hospital after officers saw blood on her body. A man spotted running away as cops arrived to assist her was later ruled out as a suspect.
And the unnamed Spaniard, held in prison after his arrest for around a year before he went on trial, was detained instead after DNA tests linked him to the crime. But told detectives she remembered a man on top of her in a car with his hands around her neck as he forced himself on her. She told the Santa Cruz court she recalled coming close to losing consciousness during the violent incident and remembered exiting the vehicle after her alleged rapist drove her a short distance following the assault.
The local worker the tourist first turned to for help gave evidence during the first day of the two-day rape trial and said she had been in a state of shock and was crying. The trial judges heard the scratches and other marks on her neck and wrists were compatible with being held down against her will and strangled in the way she described.
