Little England in Spain

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.