Expat Brits could soon find themselves under attack in Spain as the global credit crunch leaves locals out of work, a Labour MP warned.
Denis Macshane, a former Minister for Europe, warned them to brace themselves for the sort of attention given to Polish workers in the UK.
Speaking about the risk of social unrest in Europe at a think tank briefing on the implications of the economic crisis, he said: "I would not want to be a Romany; I would not want to be a foreigner; I'm not sure I would even want to be a Brit in Spain."
Mr Macshane told the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) that he had not yet seen any evidence of hostility but warned some were questioning the burdens placed on services by some expats.
Afterwards he told the Press Association: "There are already some low-level rumblings in Spain that the ageing end of the British population are demanding the care and attention that older people do," he said.
"Spain has been probably the most welcoming country to foreigners in the whole of the EU, including 800,000 Brits.
"But as Spanish unemployment is rising faster than anywhere else in Europe you will see the gradual arrival of anti-foreigner feeling - much as there has been anti-foreigner feeling generated in Britain by the tabloids against the Poles and Eastern Europeans.
"I would predict that across Europe there will be the kind of anti-foreigner demagoguery that we have seen in a lot of our tabloid papers and from some right-wing politicians against the Europeans that live and work in Britain."
