Fellow Europeans quit Spain, causing population drop despite Chinese arrivals

Spain's population shrank in 2013 for a second year, with foreigners, including many Britons, abandoning the country, although the number of Chinese there grew, official data showed.

The number of Britons - many of whom live on Spain's warm east and south coasts - plunged by nearly 23 per cent to 297,300, the figures released on Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute showed.

Chinese expatriates, many of whom run retail businesses in Spain, were the only foreign nationality group to grow there last year, increasing by 2 per cent to 185,250 people.

The departure of the foreigners meant Spain's total population fall overall for the second year running to 46.7 million, nearly 405,000 fewer people than a year earlier, the institute said.

The number of Romanians - the biggest foreign nationality group in Spain - fell by 8.6 per cent to 795,500.

Another major European expatriate group in Spain, Germans, declined by nearly 24 per cent to 138,900.