A British newspaper seized on the idiotic abuse hurled at Lewis Hamilton at a Barcelona racetrack last week to denounce what it called “the plague of racism in Spanish sport”. Most other media outlets more or less followed suit, providing the minister of sport with the opportunity to make some rare headlines and strike a righteous pose by declaring his resolve to write to his Spanish counterpart, utter dark warnings and express his disgust.

There followed the call to ban all Formula One racing in Spain this year. Presumably next we will be demanding the expulsion of Spanish clubs from the Champions League, followed by the imposition of a blanket sports boycott as per apartheid South Africa, then bans on the consumption of Spanish fruit.

What a load of mierda! Really, it’s hard to judge what is more ridiculous: the imbecility of four politically retarded Spanish F1 hooligans who insulted Hamilton in curly-wigged, black-boot-polish fancy dress or the frothings of the massed ranks of the British media, whose indignant ravings granted an unintended peep into the island nation’s very own entrenched and ancient prejudices, in this case regarding the racial inferiority of the benighted cultures of Mediterranean Europe – the hot-tempered Latins; the primitive-minded, passionate dagos. How wonderful to be able to cloak bigotry in virtue. How satisfying to trumpet one’s faith in Britain’s essential superiority without seeming impolite.

I mean, how can one say in any seriousness that there is a plague of racism in Spain, how can the minister of sport threaten to “take steps” against a European Union partner, when the very person who was the butt of the offence, the brown-skinned Lewis Hamilton, has been at pains to state how much he has always been “in love with Spain – and especially Barcelona”? To be in love, you have to have had more than a passing acquaintance with the love object. So presumably we can take it that Hamilton has been to Spain and Barcelona often, and that in all previous circumstances he has been treated with respect, if not outright affection. So where does that leave the plague, and the sanctions on an entire nation of 45m people?

Okay. So there was the ugly business at the Bernabeu in 2004 when the darker-skinned England players were jeered with monkey hoots from some members of the crowd. Bad. Very bad. And Rio Ferdinand would have done well to follow his instincts and walk off the pitch, as Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o very nearly did in response to similar abuse at Real Zaragoza two years ago. Yet Eto’o has shown no inclination to do the same in the 80-odd games that he has played on Spanish soil since. He has made no further public complaints about racism in Spanish sport. And the Brazilians Ronaldinho, Robinho and Ronaldo never have.

The other case to answer concerns Spain’s Jurassic national coach, Luis Aragones, who was overheard referring to Thierry Henry as a “negro de mierda”, while speaking to one of his players, Jose Reyes. This was translated, for lack of a better alternative, as “black s***”. It would have been better if he had not said it, but the truth is that something is lost in the translation that renders the English more aggressive than the Spanish original.

Much of it is to do with the fact that there is far higher tolerance in Spain for what in England would be considered extreme profanity. The most intimate part of the female anatomy serves for an expletive as banal in everyday speech as “Blimey!” in English; what the Spanish say they will do to, or on, God in moments of anger or distress (e.g. when they stub a toe; their team lets in a goal) could not be repeated in this or any other British newspaper. Does this mean that the Spanish are exceptionally sexist or uniquely, ragingly pagan? No it does not. (Women use the “blimey” word as much as men). It’s just the way they talk.

Now, there is no question that on race matters the British are more sensitive in their public utterances than the Spanish; more pussyfootingly correct. And this is very good and a function of the two countries’ recent histories. Black people started arriving in numbers in Britain 50 years ago and for the first 20 or so (remember Alf Garnett?) they were treated very rudely indeed. What we have seen since is a great silent act of mass contrition that has evolved into the admirable multi-racialism on display in Britain today. Ahead of Spain, no doubt. And also ahead of France, Germany and the United States, where they may have black secretaries of state, but the real people on the ground do not blend.

The point about Spain, however, is that after 500 years of racial and religious homogeneity (after they kicked out the Jews and Moors in 1492) they have suddenly had, in the past 15 years, an influx of immigrants from Africa.

It is not a long time for a society to adjust, yet they have done so with a tolerance and respect that would certainly not have been seen in Britain in 1960, and for which – I have done the work, I have talked to them from north to south, from the Basque country to Andalucia – immigrant associations in Spain consider themselves largely very fortunate.

Take these two facts. There is no far right, racially fixated political party in Spain of the type there is in France, Austria, Holland and even Britain. After the March 11, 2004 train bombings in Madrid left nearly 200 dead, there was no spate of revenge assaults on Muslims or on mosques. This in contrast, for example, to what happened in Holland after the murder of the film director Theo van Gogh.

And there is another thing. What about the racism – or bigotry or xenophobia, or whatever you want to call it – encouraged by sectors of the British press when England play France or Germany or Argentina at football? Or is it okay when the people one mocks and humiliates and insults are the same skin colour? And if so – given what happened not all that long ago in Nazi Germany and Hutu Rwanda – why?

John Carlin is a senior writer for El Pais in Spain. His book on Nelson Mandela will be published by Atlantic in September