Shocking moment Brit holidaymaker brawls with tourist in Tenerife | World | News
This is the dramatic moment tempers flared between two tourists, including a British holidaymaker, on a Spanish island. The scrap resulted in a rapid rollover as the duo brought traffic to a halt on a Tenerife mountain road.
In the footage, it is seen that the losing man fell heavily on the asphalt during the fight. He initially appeared to lose consciousness, but quickly got back to his feet and is heard on the video swearing as other drivers honked their horns. The angry Brit appeared to attack the woman accompanying his rival, complaining that she had swung at his bike while he was trying to take a “fuck photo”, but after finishing his abusive rant he appeared to sit back in the driver’s seat of a white rental car at the front of the shoot.
The fisticuffs, which one of the social media users who commented on the video called “Hot dog vs. smashed burger”, took place on the winding road leading to the small mountain village of Masca in northwestern Tenerife.
This beautiful village often attracts tourists looking for 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 in the next few months to coincide with the peak holiday season, were using the images today as an example of the visitors they do not want to see.
One commenter on the fight scene wrote: “Quality tourism.”
Responding to a woman who said, “Our island is becoming very beautiful,” another added sarcastically: “These are their traditions, they should be respected.”
A third noted the obvious suggestion that sometimes you have to put up with a few undesirable things for the greater good: “Tourism leaves thousands of millions of euros on the islands, which is something bananas cannot do.”
Tenerife has been at the center of protests against the effects of mass tourism in Spain for the past few years.
Graffiti in English left on walls and benches in and around Palm Mar in South Tenerife in early April last year included ‘My misery is your paradise’ and ‘Average salary in the Canary Islands is 1,200 euros’.
In an apparent response in the UK, a reply left in English on the wall next to the message ‘Tourists go home’ read: “Fuck you, we pay your wages.”
Thousands of people in the Canary Islands took to the streets of the Atlantic archipelago at the same time to demand their politicians take action against problems such as pollution and a lack of affordable housing, which protesters linked to the number of holidaymakers flocking to the region.
Government officials in Tenerife, where protesters held banners reading “You enjoy, we suffer” and “Tourism moratorium now”, later said around 30,000 people attended, but organizers put the figure at 80,000.
In October last year, demonstrators stormed a Tenerife beach and surrounded holidaymakers in their swimsuits during another anti-mass tourism demonstration.
The surreal scenes unfolded as hundreds of protesters diverted from their planned coastal route at Playa de las Americas in the south of the island and took over Troy Beach.
Two months ago, a fight between locals and foreign tourists cycling along the east coast of Spain’s mainland city of Valencia ended with Spaniards shouting ‘Go Home’ and holidaymakers responding in English with ‘Fuck you’.
Two groups appeared to have come very close to a fight in a narrow street in Valencia’s beautiful Old Town.
One of the female cyclists looked on the verge of tears as she watched from a safe distance.
A Valencia-based association, whose English name can be translated as ‘Neighbourhood in Danger of Extinction’, later claimed that the incident occurred because the cyclists wanted to pass an area where they were holding an event following a police evacuation and refused to get off the bike or slow down.
They admitted shouting ‘Go Tourist Home’ but accused Dutch holidaymakers of resorting to violence.
