This is the dramatic moment tempers flared between two tourists — including a British holidaymaker — on a Spanish island. The scrap ended in a quick knockdown as the pair brought traffic to a standstill on a Tenerife mountain road.
Footage shows the losing man taking a heavy fall onto the tarmac during the altercation. He initially seemed to have been knocked unconscious, but quickly got back on his feet and can be heard in the video swearing as other motorists beeped their horns. The angry Brit appeared to be having a go at the woman accompanying his adversary and complaining she had swung at his bike while he was trying to take a “f****** photo”, although he appeared to get back into the driver’s seat of a white hire car in the forefront of the shot after ending his foul-mouthed rant.
The punch-up, dubbed ‘Hot dog versus smash burger’ by one of the social media users commenting on the video, happened on the winding road to the small mountain hamlet of Masca in the north-west of Tenerife.
The beautiful village usually draws tourists in search of something more than sun and sea and is known as the ‘Machu Picchu of Europe.’
Islanders who are expected to restart their long-running protests against mass tourism over the next few months to coincide with its peak holiday season were today using the footage as an example of the sort of visitors they don’t want to see.
One commenting on the fight scene wrote: “Quality tourism.”
Another responding to a woman who said: “Our island is becoming so beautiful”, added sarcastically: “These are their traditions, they must be respected.”
A third pointed out in an apparent suggestion you sometimes have to put up with a few undesirables for the better good: “Tourism leaves thousands of millions of euros in the islands, something which bananas don’t do.”
Tenerife has been at the heart of protests against the effects of mass tourism that have taken place in Spain over the past couple of years.
Graffiti in English left on walls and benches in and around Palm Mar in southern Tenerife at the start of April last year included ‘My misery your paradise’ and ‘Average salary in Canary Islands is 1,200 euros.’
In an apparent UK backlash, a response left in English on a wall next to a ‘Tourists go home’ message said: “F**k off, we pay your wages.”
Thousands of people in the Canary Islands took to the streets of the Atlantic archipelago around the same time to demand their politicians take action against problems like the lack of affordable housing and pollution which protesters have linked to the number of holidaymakers flocking to the destination.
Government officials in Tenerife, where protestors held up banners which said: ‘You enjoy we suffer’ and ‘Tourism moratorium now’, later said around 30,000 people had taken part but organisers put the figure at 80,000.
In October last year demonstrators stormed a Tenerife beach and surrounded holidaymakers in their swimwear during another anti-mass tourism demo.
The surreal scenes occurred after hundreds of protestors diverted from their planned seafront route in Playa de las Americas in the south of the island and ended up taking over Troya Beach.
Two months ago a row between locals and foreign tourists enjoying a cycle tour of the east coast Spanish mainland city of Valencia ended with the Spaniards shouting ‘Go Home’ and the holidaymakers responding in English: ‘F**K you.’
The two groups appeared to come close to blows in a narrow street in Valencia’s pretty Old Town.
One of the female cyclists seemed on the verge of tears as she watched on from a safe distance.
A Valencia-based association whose name in English would translate as ‘Neighbourhood in Danger of Extinction’ claimed afterwards the incident occurred because the cyclists wanted to cross an area they were holding an event in following a police eviction and refused to dismount or slow down.
They admitted shouting ‘Tourist Go Home’ but accused the Dutch holidaymakers of turning violent.
