When Spain’s footballers won the World Cup in South Africa last year the fans watching it on giant outdoor television screens in Madrid were not the only contented people on the streets of the capital.

On that hot July night, dozens of Chinese men and women appeared within minutes of the final whistle and stationed themselves on strategic street corners. From loaded shopping trolleys they sold ice-cold beers to the jubilant Spaniards. They did not have licences. But who cared on such a night?

Even at the south-western edge of Europe – in a country that has no memorable historical ties with China – the combination of entrepreneurial Chinese migrants and Beijing’s increasing global influence has started to have a noticeable impact on urban life and the national economy.

The China phenomenon in Spain is barely a decade old, but its importance is growing. Chinese immigrants came later to Spain than they did to other developed European economies, probably because the country was itself a slow developer and late arrival in the European Union.

In 1961 there were just 161 Chinese nationals resident in Spain, according to official statistics, and they numbered less than 10,000 as late as 1995. Today there are more than 170,000, although the real number including illegal migrants is estimated at about 240,000.

The population is already large enough to support its own newspaper industry. “Most Chinese here don’t speak Spanish, so we translate news about Spain into Chinese, so they are informed about general news and above all about immigration policy,” says Tao Xinyi, editor-in-chief at the Ouhua (Europe-China) media group founded in 2002.

Chinese immigration began in the traditional way: a family-owned Chinese restaurant here and there; the occasional shop selling cheap household goods and advertising todo a cien (“Everything for 100 pesetas”). Urban Spaniards now go to el chino for spur-of-the-moment purchases just as Britons go their Indian- or Pakistani-run corner shops.

In the past few years the Chinese have also established themselves in the Spanish wholesale trade, based in Fuenlabrada, on the southern outskirts of Madrid, where they trade in the increasingly large quantities of clothes, shoes and toys imported from China. In 2009, Spain imported €14.5bn ($20bn) of products from China, now its third biggest supplier after Germany and France, and exported nearly €2bn of its own goods to China.

Spanish business owners have reacted to the rise of Chinese enterprise in their midst with a mixture of admiration, resentment and fear. Six years ago there were violent protests against Chinese shoe imports. Spaniards have since been obliged to recognise the importance of the Chinese as customers, competitors and, increasingly, employers.

“Now that China is very strong, people get to know us more and start to respect us more, but they are also afraid of the commercial ‘invasion’ and the idea that ‘Chinese people are taking our jobs’,” says a Chinese executive at a large Spanish company, who asked not to be named.

Chinese investors have also purchased homes and businesses everywhere from Barcelona to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. And unlike Spaniards encumbered with regulations and official bureaucracy, they are accustomed to developing new businesses in a matter of weeks rather than over months or years.

Liu Songlin, chairman of the Association of Chinese Commercial Companies in Spain, is one of the formidably energetic entrepreneurs who have spearheaded China’s push into the Iberian market.

Based in Fuenlabrada, he opened the first Chinese restaurant there for Chinese workers in 1997. He imports clothes and other goods from China, exports Spanish ham and wine to Chinese buyers and continues to make new investments at whirlwind speed, spending a week each month in Wenzhou, in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, where his family has a factory.

Mr Liu, dressed casually in leather jacket, is a far cry from the typically dark-suited Spanish businessman. In between texting and talking almost continuously on his mobile telephone while driving between appointments in his silver Mercedes, he rejects common complaints in Spain that Chinese entrepreneurs evade tax.

“We pay the same taxes as the Spanish,” he says. “We come from China and work in a foreign country so of course we work harder. Those who work harder earn more. We are investors as well as workers.”

The fact that Mr Liu comes from Wenzhou, an entrepreneurial hub, is no coincidence. Some of the earliest Chinese migrants to Spain happened to come from the nearby town of Qingtian. They invited first their relatives and then their townspeople. Chinese residents of Madrid say 80-90 per cent of their compatriots in Spain have their origins in Zhejiang.

At first they were barely noticed, while successive Spanish governments and the police turned their attention to managing the influx of millions of jobseekers from Latin America and north Africa.

“The Chinese community has existed here for years, but it has been very discreet,” says Pedro Nueno, president of the China Europe International Business School. “Furthermore, it is very entrepreneurial and hardworking and creates no problems. There are no big health costs or unemployment costs.”

Nowadays, however, the Chinese presence in Spain is simply too big to escape notice. The warehouses and shops of Fuenlabrada remain the places to go to shop in bulk for clothing, umbrellas, baby chairs, cheap watches or pyjamas. But China is bringing more than toys and shoes.

The latest stage of the relationship has meant fast-growing trade and investment in industry and services. There is also an official plan to increase the number of Chinese tourists to 1m a year by 2020. Many of the 90,000 who came last year were big spenders. Luxury goods stores in Madrid such as Hermès have Chinese-speaking staff on hand to serve what is now their most important group of foreign clients.

When Li Keqiang, Chinese vice-premier, arrived in Madrid this month to drop hints about buying Spanish sovereign bonds to help alleviate the eurozone debt crisis, he was greeted by Expansión, Spain’s main business newspaper, with the front-page headline: “Welcome, Mr Li!”. It was a reference to “Welcome, Mr Marshall!”, a 1953 Spanish comedy film about a village hoping to benefit from US assistance for postwar Europe.

“We are very proud to be Chinese,” says Mr Liu in Fuenlabrada, after Mr Li’s visit. “China is growing and has more power than before, thanks to the Chinese government ... It is very different from western governments, where you have freedom but are not united. We are very united.”