The video shows two groups of men launching feral punches at one another on the crowded beach until the situation escalated with a man seen swinging a metal pole at the beachgoers. Other sunbathers frantically scooped up their belongings and raced away from the scene as the metal pole swung directly into one man’s arm. One of the tourists caught up in the melee – a man with a Cockney accent wearing red shorts – took a punch to the face from another in blue swimming trunks as he protested: “They’re mine, they’re mine, these are mine.”
The violent scenes are understood to have unfolded at lunchtime on Saturday.
A man in white shorts reacted to the attack on his friend by running over and punching the aggressor in the face as someone else shouted out in English: “You’d better f*** off.”
The man in the red shorts, believed to be a Briton, continued to protest an unidentified valuable had been taken, before shouting out: “You give me my money back.”
He then points his finger and repeats his demand: “You give me my f****** money back.”
A cloud of sand was whipped up as the mass of flailing limbs hit the ground and continued to writhe.
Street vendors raced over to try and break up the chaos as incoming siren wail in the background.
The shocking incident happened on La Barceloneta beach, which for years has been at the centre of tension between holidaymakers and locals who say their working class area has been destroyed by mass Magaluf-style tourism.
A spokesman for the regional Mossos d’Esquadra police force, which sent officers to the scene, confirmed the incident had been dealt with by local police employed by Barcelona town hall.
The pair were identified as holidaymakers by enraged locals who used the footage to complain about the drunken tourists they claimed were ruining their former fishing village.
The working-class neighbourhood near the Catalan capital’s coastline has been the scene of long-running protests against drunken Magaluf-style holidaymakers and illegal tourist flats.
The protests started in La Barceloneta but spread to other areas of the city including Poblenou.
Months of discontent erupted in 2014 with noisy street protests after a group of tourists were filmed coming out of a supermarket in La Barceloneta naked in broad daylight.
A neighbourhood association which published footage of the beach fight involving the British tourists said: “A normal day on La Barceloneta beach in Barcelona.”
Barcelona is one of the most major tourist destinations in the world.
The website Statista claimed that in 1990 just 1.73 million tourists checked into Barcelona hotels.
But between 2000 and 2010, the number shot from 3.14 million to 7.13 million.
By 2017, the number had levelled out at around 9 million.