Tourist mecca tiff Canary Islanders in a flap

Thousands of flag-waving demonstrators hit the streets across Spain's Canary Islands on Sunday to demand restrictions to the mass tourism they say is overwhelming their Atlantic archipelago.

Rallying under the slogan "The Canary Islands have a limit", demonstrators began marching at midday in tourist hotspots across all of the archipelago's seven main islands.

Protesters gathered outside a convention centre in Maspalomas on the island of Gran Canaria, the only water park on the island of Fuerteventura, and the nightlife district in Playa de las Americas on Tenerife's southwestern tip.

Waving the white, blue and yellow flags of the Canary Islands, chanting and whistling protesters slow-marched by tourists sitting in outdoor terraces in Playa de las Americas before they rallied on the beach.

"This beach is ours," they chanted as tourists sitting on sunbeds under parasol shades looked on.

The demonstration followed large protests held in April in town squares across the archipelago against a model of mass tourism critics say favours investors at the expense of the environment, and that prices local residents out of housing and forces them into precarious jobs.