This is the dramatic moment a British tourist brawled with another holidaymaker on a Tenerife mountain road, bringing traffic to a standstill after claiming his wife was threatened over a photograph.
Footage shows the pair throwing punches in the middle of the road before the Brit was knocked onto the tarmac.
He quickly scrambled back to his feet, swearing angrily as car horns blared around him.
The furious tourist then turned his attention to the woman accompanying his opponent, accusing her of threatening his wife as they tried to take a photograph.
‘She swung at my f*****g wife,’ he appears to shout, although it is not clear what is being said, as another road user attempts to calm him, saying: ‘Come on, quiet.’
The Brit later returned to the driver’s seat of a white hire car at the front of the queue, ending his foul-mouthed outburst.
The scuffle, dubbed ‘Hot dog versus smash burger’ by social media users, took place on the winding road to the mountain hamlet of Masca in north-west Tenerife.
The picturesque village, often described as the ‘Machu Picchu of Europe’, is popular with tourists seeking more than sun and sea.
This is the dramatic moment a British tourist brawled with another holidaymaker on a Tenerife mountain road, bringing traffic to a standstill after claiming his wife was threatened over a photograph
Footage shows the pair throwing punches in the middle of the road before the Brit was knocked onto the tarmac
He quickly scrambled back to his feet, swearing angrily as car horns blared around him
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 protestors have linked to the number of holidaymakers flocking to the destination.
The furious tourist then turned his attention to the woman accompanying his opponent, accusing her of threatening his wife as they tried to take a photograph
‘She swung at my f*****g wife,’ he can be heard shouting, as another road user attempts to calm him, saying: ‘Come on, quiet’
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.
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“Be careful what you wish for!” Brits tell Spanish anti-tourism protesters
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 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.
The scuffle, dubbed ‘Hot dog versus smash burger’ by social media users, took place on the winding road to the mountain hamlet of Masca in north-west Tenerife
They admitted shouting ‘Tourist Go Home’ but accused the Dutch holidaymakers of turning violent.
An English-speaking former resident described the scenes as ‘unfortunate.’ He wrote online: ‘I loved the city while I was there.
Nobody treated me like this. ‘My dream was to return to do a Master’s degree at the university and at the same time carry on improving my Spanish.
‘I just wanted to live simply and with respect towards other people. But if things are like this, I don’t know anymore what to think.’
A fortnight before the Valencia incident a British holidaymaker in Benidorm turned into a wannabe Mike Tyson during a road rage altercation with an upset pedestrian who had to stop for him on a zebra crossing.
The Georgie-sounding tourist saw red after being confronted over his actions and got into a brief fist fight before turning the air blue with the F-word and other expletives as his rival ripped the wing mirror off his hire car and fled the scene.
Unluckily for the Brit a police van was coming up the road – and an officer escorted him out of his car to arrest him while another got behind the wheel to move the vehicle.
