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 Tuesday.

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

Chinese expatriates, many of whom run retail businesses in Spain, were the only foreign nationality group to grow there in 2013, increasing in number by two percent to 185,250 people.

The departure of the foreigners made 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 INE said.

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

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

Millions of foreigners, many of them Latin Americans, flocked to Spain for work during a decade-long building boom that went bust in 2008.

Many have since found themselves jobless and begun returning to their home countries.