On February 5, 2000, a group of local men in the Spanish province of Almería set up barricades across the roads leading to the remote agricultural town of El Ejido. Then they stormed the neighborhoods of North African farmworkers, burned tires, turned over cars, and ransacked a Muslim butchershop. The rampage continued for days, as locals armed with knives, rocks, crowbars, and baseball bats set fire to immigrants' homes, stores, and cars, and went on a “caza del moro.” By the time it was over, more than seventy people had been injured and hundreds of immigrant farmworkers left homeless.

A year later, in the small, southern Italian town of Salandra, angry nationals attacked an orphanage where thirty-one Albanian children were staying. Crying “Lynch the Albanians!” and carrying rocks and clubs, the mob of five hundred people was outraged that some Albanian boys “had looked at” local girls during a neighborhood get-together.