Paulo,
It was an accident waiting to happen, and the reason it was that, is political correctness.
The reasons pushing forward the surge to quit were all hidden behind the smokescreen of jobs, and Europeans who had never contributed to the welfare system in Britain collecting unemployment benefits because they could.
A zillion Turks moving into Britain and bringing their "way of life" with them was the actual fear behind it, speeding the Islamification of the country, just as the French fear with their own land. (What the Germans fear is not hard to understand.) Insofar as Britain is concerned, it is already more than half a century too late: the disaster of 1947 with the splitting of greater India into three units consisting of India in the middle with West Pakistan to the north-west and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to the north-east was not a smooth one. In what was essentially a rel¡gious division, many thousands who couldn't get the hell out of the 'wrong' areas in time were murdered on both sides. So why does it affect Britain today? Because it handed out pasports to those who wanted them and the floodgates opened. Ditto with the Caribbean, and for those former Indians kicked out later from various African countries. The religious divides arrived then, in the forties; the EEC hardly makes any difference on that score.
So political correctness, how does it figure?
Because even today it has prevented the truth being debated, either fully in Europe or even slightly in the UK. Every politician who has dared to come within breathing distance of the subject has been branded racist, thisophobe or thatophobe; in our lands of 'freedom' only the indigenous people are prevented from expressing what they may actually feel. Look at many political rallies, and you see the same thing: dissenting native voices get banned but the other sides are allowed to carry on out of fear of the government or the police being branded racist if they stop them. It's called the race card; you simply could not make it up.
How this will impact on the expats from all the European countries living elsewhere in Europe is anyone's guess. I hope that some form of common sense will prevail and that medical services for those who live outwith their native European lands continue. For many here in Spain, we are on our last legs: we spend all our pensions and savings on the local economy and I trust the value won't go unrecognized. Whether that will be enough to allow health reciprocities to continue is a debatable point. I believe that those existed even prior to EEC membership if one was in receipt of a pension from elsewhere; but, in the stench of new developments, who knows how emotions may turn? Will the next cup of coffee one orders be put down on the table or poured over one's head?
What happens next to the property market is another pressure point building up. My own place has been on the market for over a year and not a single viewer, as for the vast majority of the rest of them whose owners I know. Building used to be a huge component of the Spanish economy; it fell badly in 2008 and is still dragging on the bottom. Brexit isn't going to help anyone in that particular position.
The rest of the Grand European Adventure? I see two possibilities: it will simply fall apart à la domino: the place will wake up and do what those pesky Brits had wanted all along - get its act together and stop playing at international patsy. A little of the iron fist may yet save it. There has never been another way.
A victory for the closed eyes, the refusal to see what is real, and the politically correct.
P.S.
And as the Chairman says - we can thank our media owners (the biggest of whom isn't even British). If nothing more, from this fiasco we could perhaps learn the folly of allowing the press and 'popular' television to fall into foreign hands.
P.P.S.
Apparently, about 25% - 30% didn't even bother to vote. Not exercising your birthright should be a criminal act. Whichever way they might have voted.