This is very common regarding parking in towns and cities. I don’t think there is any automatic right to park on the ‘highway’. It is tolerated by local councils until they decide that a particular stretch of roadway must be subject to some sort of parking control.
Visiting a pal in Bath, I parked near the house in the only space available in a street of terraced houses. There were no parking restrictions in force.
Not long after parking, an indignant fellow was at the door demanding to know whose car was parked in ‘his space’. It was my car. He demanded I move it. As there were no more spaces, I refused, pointing out that he was not entitled to claim any of the public highway as reserved for him. He said he would call the police. I told him that would be a very good idea, to clear up this point.
Plod duly appeared. Having established that I owned the car and that it was in a legal state to drive about on the Queen’s highways, he said he would point out the facts of parking life to the complainant and that “If it goes on like this in these streets in Bath, there will have to be parking permits”.
I suppose that having identified himself and his address as the whinger, the whinger didn’t dare mess with my car.
People can get very odd, with their sense of parking entitlement. I parked outside the front gate of a friend’s house in London. This in a road with no parking restrictions. There was a space ahead of me, there were spaces all over, hard by. When he came back from the shops he went into a foaming rant about me parking in ‘his space’ and called me all sorts of horrid names.
I lived for 20 years in those parts of London which have had res park for decades. R.B. Kensington & Chelsea will give a res park permit to anyone who qualifies. That does not mean you are entitled to a residents’ parking space. It is well known that R.B.K.C. res park permits exceed res park bays by about 30%.
The same in Westminster. I once had to park so far from my flat that in the morning - very late morning after the night before 
that, after trawling the streets all round the area for a considerable time I decided my car had been stolen and reported it so.
Later, the g/f turned up, herself having recovered 
and we went touring around in her car. We found my car in a remote patch of my parking zone.
I once pulled into my street in W9 at some time well past midnight to find Plod and a fleet of tow trucks lifting all the double-parkers. They would all have moved by 08:30 but double parked is double parked - what if the fire brigade had to get adjacent to the flats?
One of the fab things about living in central Valencia was not having to have a car. The s/mkt, the P.O, the health centre, the wonderful Mercardo Central, Av Colon, the main ‘shopping’ street, the railway station, were all <15 mins walk. The beach was 35 mins on a #32. The terminal stop for the airport bus was at the end of my street!
But was too hot… 
).