Madrid's open-top bus tours are normally a hit with tourists as people from across the globe take the chance to visit some of the city's most famous attractions.

But now there is a bus tour with a difference, with health workers replacing holidaymakers as they try to make their voices heard on a tour of the city's worst COVID-19 facilities.

A year of street protests by healthcare unions over poor working conditions and overrun facilities have yielded precious little for the organizers, so on Tuesday they changed their tactics.

Instead of taking in the sights, the tour took CGTN Europe to four primary health care centers around Madrid.

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Organizers say the aim was to highlight the near-impossible working conditions that healthcare professionals here are facing.

First stop was the suburb of Fuenlabrada where Raquel Collados, a family doctor at the Loranca health care center, revealed how his practice has been overrun with patients.

"Our main problem is that there are simply too many patients to take care of," he said. "This area is very demanding. Right now we don't have enough doctors, two doctors are sick, so it's two positions that haven't been filled. In addition, we also have two paediatric positions also unfilled. So staff-wise, that is a big structural loss for us."

Over the past 12 months, there have been countless protests by various healthcare unions.

Last year, nurses demonstrated in Puerta del Sol, a few months ago doctors were on the march in the city center, and just a few weeks ago healthcare workers used mannequins to highlight the acute shortage of medical staff in Madrid.

So the organizers came up with the slightly unusual approach in an effort to get their message across.

Alicia Martin, who works for the AMTYS doctors' union, is one of the organizers of the open-top bus tour.

"We thought the bus would be a good visual way to show the major problems in Madrid's primary health care system," she explained. "We can highlight the problems patients and doctors suffer in different areas of Madrid. That's why we are visiting four different centers, each one an example of the deficiencies in the system."

The regional government in Madrid says these demonstrations are politically motivated and not about improving the working conditions of healthcare staff.

The primary healthcare workers that we met clearly feel differently.

Video editor: Gabriel Alaiz