GRAN CANARIA, Spain: Thousands of people protested against mass tourism in Spain's Canary Islands on Sunday, urging authorities to limit the number of visitors to protect local residents from soaring housing costs, traffic congestion and overburdened services.

Marching under the banner "Canaries have a limit", demonstrators took to the streets in all of the archipelago's main islands and in several cities in mainland Spain. Some chanted about the effects of tourism on water supplies.

"Tourism is very important for the Canary Islands, but we have to realise that the collapse is total," Juan Francisco Galindo, a hotel manager in Tenerife, told Reuters.

His father owns a small island property on which the local administration issued an expropriation order in 2023 due to the approval of a luxury hotel complex project.