  We have obtained spectroscopic observations from 3600 Angstrom to 9200
Angstrom with FORS at the Very Large Telescope for approximately 70 H II
regions located in the spiral galaxies NGC 1232, NGC 1365, NGC 2903, NGC 2997
and NGC 5236. These data are part of a project aiming at measuring the chemical
abundances and characterizing the massive stellar content of metal-rich
extragalactic H II regions. In this paper we describe our dataset, and present
emission line fluxes for the whole sample. In 32 H II regions we measure at
least one of the following auroral lines: [S II]4072, [N II]5755, [S III]6312
and [O II]7325. From these we derive electron temperatures, as well as oxygen,
nitrogen and sulphur abundances, using classical empirical methods (both
so-called "Te-based methods" and "strong line methods"). Under the assumption
that the temperature gradient does not introduce severe biases, we find that
the most metal-rich nebulae with detected auroral lines are found at
12+log(O/H)~8.9, i.e. about 60% larger than the adopted solar value. However,
classical abundance determinations in metal-rich H II regions may be severely
biased and must be tested with realistic photoionization models. The
spectroscopic observations presented in this paper will serve as a homogeneous
and high-quality database for such purpose.
