 Spain is a hot spot for northern Europeans, but local anger is growing. Where in the world is there an immigrant community who dominate the local economy, who dictate what gets developed and who local politicians fall over themselves to woo? Welcome to San Fulgencio, a town of 11,000 in the Spanish province of Alicante. With a 75 per cent foreign population made up of Britons, Germans and other Europeans, this traditionally homogeneous city has become a sort of open-door laboratory on immigration. Thousands of northern Europeans, tired of the damp and cold, are moving south to start new lives in sunny Spain. It is something of an irony that, once there, many try to re-create the lives they were so desperate to leave back home.
View Witness - Little England. Video hosted on Youtube. The locals are bemused by their new neighbours - but with up to three quarters of a million Britons spending most of the year there, they cannot be dismissed. Economists agree that the influx of tourists and foreigners seeking an alternative or second home in the sun has been crucial to Spain's ten-year economic boom. The first signs of friction are beginning to emerge, however. The future may not be as simple as it once appeared. As corruption scandals over excessive building across Spain are provoking a change in mood, Spaniards are not quite so ready to be patronised, and are certainly not as desperate for the cash. Filmmaker Justin Webster investigates the growing tensions - on both sides - over white immigration.
Travel information Spain.
The Spanish passion for living is deliciously contagious.
Once away from the holiday costas, you could only be in Spain. In the cities, narrow twisting old streets suddenly open out to views of daring modern architecture, while spit-and-sawdust bars serving wine from the barrel rub shoulders with blaring, glaring discos. Travel is easy, accommodation plentiful, the climate benign, the people relaxed, the beaches long and sandy, the food and drink easy to come by and full of regional variety. More than 50 million foreigners a year visit Spain, yet you can also travel for days and hear nothing but Spanish.
Spain can be enjoyable any time of year. The ideal months to visit are May, June and September (plus April and October in the south). At these times you can rely on good-to-excellent weather, yet avoid the extreme heat - and the main crush of Spanish and foreign tourists - of July and August. But there's decent weather in some parts of Spain virtually year round. Winter along the southern and southeastern Mediterranean coasts is mild, while in the height of summer you can retreat to the northwest, to beaches or high mountains anywhere to escape excessive heat. The best festivals are mostly concentrated between Semana Santa (the week leading up to Easter Sunday) and September to October.
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