Smash hit

“The public authorities keep silent and deny the existence of discrimination when it is made public,” it said in a report. “Most of them turn a blind eye to the situation.” Spanish Government officials did not respond to requests for comment.

For much of the 20th Century, Spaniards were themselves migrants, driven by the Civil War and famine at home to seek a better life elsewhere - mainly in Latin America. Now the trend has reversed, with hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans coming to live in booming Spain.

More recently, Spain has witnessed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Romanians, who learn Spanish easily because of the similarity of their language. And many Africans have also arrived on their shores, sometimes in rickety boats from hundreds of miles away.

Taken together, the speed and breadth of the changes have been breathtaking: since 2000, the population of Spain has jumped from 40 million to more than 45 million. Nearly 10 per cent of the population - the highest proportion in Europe - is now foreign-born, according to the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development.

A recent Government study showed that Spaniards have mixed feelings about immigration. More than 65 per cent said that racial diversity was a good thing in Spain. At the same time, 62 per cent said there had been too much immigration and more than 70 per cent favoured special treatment for Spaniards over immigrants in social services.

In the past, Spain has had a broadly liberal attitude to immigration and many Spaniards acknowledge that their country would not have enjoyed its spectacular growth without immigrants. The country’s birth rate is one of the lowest in Europe, and the Spanish-born population has long been shrinking. A recent study by savings bank La Caixa found that the country’s economy would also have shrunk if it were not for immigration.

But the speed at which entire neighbourhoods have changed complexion has unsettled many Spaniards. Recent months have seen violent clashes between groups of Spanish and Latin American youths in poor areas on the outskirts of Madrid.

And the Government was last month forced to ban an anti-immigrant protest in Madrid, saying it incited violence against foreigners. The crude poster for the protest march depicted blacks menacing Spanish children with knives and syringes, under the slogan: “Let’s take back Madrid."

Today, Spanish media all-but ignored the controversy over Lewis Hamilton’s treatment in Barcelona. On the internet, however, a furious debate was raging about the incident, with some condemning the fans’ behaviour and others saying that Hamilton had deserved the abuse because of his own comments about Alonso.

“He who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind,” said one user, ‘Hydra’. “I don’t agree with those comments but that kid has had it coming to him. If you have the balls to insult people, then you have to take it.”

Others were horrified at posts seeking to defend the racist taunts. “This is very sad and embarrassing for our country,” wrote ‘Zafor’. “The racists in our country are going to have to get used to living with a black person, a Latin American or North African. It’s bad for sport, for Formula 1 and above all, the image of our country.”