Donkeys in Spain
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Following on from the last post at Angel for Animals, Animal Testing – Dying for Botox?, in which I looked at the testing of animals for botox, I’m changing tack slightly in order to highlight the plight of donkeys that are maltreated in southern Spain where I live.
Spain is not a country that is well known for its love of animals. In a supposedly modern, fully westernised and educated country that is a part of the Europen Union, it beggars belief that its people still glorify the hated bull-fights that still attract big crowds wherever they are staged.
Things are changing, but slowly. The younger generation are becoming more anti- bull fighting but it will be a long process to rid the indiginous people of their inbred lack of concern for animals.
To be perfectly honest it sickens me how backward these people can be when it comes to mistreating animals. Many people own dogs, but leave them tied up in small yards as guard dogs for their property and rarley if ever let them out for proper walks or socialise them with their family. The dog is not man’s best friend in Spain – its his slave.
That is not what I will write about here in any more detail for this post. Here I want to write about the similarly barbaric treatment of donkeys.
Donkeys have been kept as beasts of burden for centuries in the hot, almost desert-like regions of southern Spain. Their owners used to rely heavily on them to carry heavy loads across countryside and even mountainous regions where vehicles could not go. Even today, they are used in this way in the inland pueblos. But the march of progress has urbanized much of the southern coastal regions and the need for donkeys has almost become unnecessary. That means there are an awful lot of donkeys roaming around.
They are left to starve in the wild, or worse tied up on vacant plots of land that no one visits and no one seems to want to care for them any more.
Fortunately, there are charity associations that are trying to locate and rescue these beleaguered animals and they are always in need of volunteers to help them. I’ll be posting some contact information for them shortly.
Terry Didcott
Angel For Animals
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[...] the last post Donkeys in Spain, we looked at the problems facing donkeys in Spain. In this instalment, we take a look at a very [...]