Riot police have been met with a backlash in Madrid while attending a historic protest over housing and the tourism industry.
Footage shared on X shows Policia Nacional officers being pelted with paper or cups as hundreds of demonstrators chant anti-police slogans.
Elsewhere a protester captured the awkward moment tourists with huge suitcases were forced to walk among the crowds.
They wrote on X: ‘Those of us who protested against the problem and some of those who are part of it were walking along the same street.’
Protests took over 40 cities in Spain on Saturday as hundreds of thousands demanded an end to the so-called ‘housing racket’.
One placard in Malaga asked: ‘Why has having a home become an unaffordable luxury?’, while another said: ‘I play The Sims because only in a computer game can I be a mother and have a house.’
Another sign read: ‘More locals, less tourists’, while one declared: ‘Our lives matter more than your business.’
In Madrid, demonstrators from the CGT union demanded lower prices, with one banner calling for a rent strike.
A mother and son were seen holding up a sign in the capital reading: ‘Boycott Airbnb’, while a fellow protester’s board added: ‘Gentrifying your neighbourhood… #deactivateairbnb.’
Demonstrations are taking place in Malaga, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Mallorca, Ibiza, Tenerife and a host of other major cities.
Many Spaniards, particularly young people, say they are fed-up of being increasingly priced out of city centres due to rising rents and surging buying costs.
The brunt of the crisis has been blamed on the rise of tourist apartments, which have surged by tens of thousands over the past few years.
The most affected areas are naturally tourist hotspots like Madrid, Sevilla, Malaga, Tenerife, Mallorca, Ibiza, Valencia, Cadiz and elsewhere.
In many cities, business owners and landlords are turning their properties into short-term holiday lets due to the much higher returns.
But this is stripping supply for local families desperate for long-term accommodation, while those looking to buy are seeing prices reach astronomical heights.
The anger reached new heights in Barcelona last year when locals were filmed spraying tourists with water pistols and telling them to go home.
Many have argued that the tourists are not to blame, when many of the property owners creating tourist flats are in fact Spanish.
But local governments have been forced to act in the face of mammoth protests.
Barcelona announced last year that it will ban ALL of its tourist apartments by 2028. The measure includes retroactively removing licences from all existing holiday flats.
Malaga also recently announced that it will introduce a ‘global moratorium’ on tourist flats, although more details have yet to be revealed.
