Protests in Spain 25rh March 2012 – Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Murcia and more

On Sunday 25th Mawrch 2012 at 1800, animal rights campaigners took to the streets in towns and cities throughout Spain to protest against the cruelty inflicted on animals in the name of tradition and fiestas. Here’s a translation the story.

Madrid, March 25 (EFE). – Citizens of 31 Spanish cities organized through social networks have come this evening simultaneously on the street with their pets to seek tougher penalties for animal cruelty under the Criminal Code referred to in the “Second People’s Initiative not to animal abuse.”

The protests, with playful and festive, have started at six in the afternoon in 31 major cities in all parts of the Spanish territory, except in Andalusia and Asturias, where today you can not place such acts by election day.

The initiative has been organized for the second year through Internet and is supported by seven organizations against animal abuse at the national (Equanimal, Mascoteros Solidarity, PACMA, Platform Dignity Animal Torture is not culture, and Pro Setter Animanaturalis Spain) and dozens of them at regional level.

Marta Esteban, one of the participants in the event in Madrid, which took place in the Gardens of Discovery, near the central Plaza de Colón, explained, told Efe that this is “an initiative by anonymous Internet” that want to denounce “the backwardness of Spain in regard to animal protection.”

“We have a penal code that has just been renovated in December 2010, so insufficient in regard to animals, because it allows exceptions depending on the species. The bull, for example, if you can abuse for fun topics” he added.

The “People’s Initiative to Animal Abuse It” requires, therefore, “that the Criminal Code be strengthened, that the penalties for animal abusers are older and that abuse has no exceptions for species.”

They also ask Spain to accede to the European Convention for the Protection of Domestic Animals, and Monday morning presented at the Congress of Deputies more than 400,000 signatures requesting that these demands are met.

This afternoon, in the most massive protest held in Madrid attended by several hundred people, most with their pets-dogs-mainly, was a long queue to keep adding signatures to a petition, and numerous entertainment events.

On stage there was live music, capoeira dancing and reading of manifestos in defence of animals and against animal abuse.

One of the most memorable was that of Mary, a girl of Aranda de Duero (Burgos), 10, who has collected 140 signatures in his school “for people who mistreat animals receive some punishment.”

La Coruna, Alicante, Astorga, Avila, Barcelona, Bilbao, Burgos, Figueres, Girona, Guadalajara, La Rioja, Las Palmas, León, Palencia Murcia have been others in the cities where concentrations were held more crowded, with several hundred of attendees.
In the case of Murcia, where protestors have come to the doors of the cathedral accompanied by their dogs, one of the participants, Antonia Gomez lamented that in Spain “is worse than having a loose dog be thrown into a well” and has demanded “increase penalties for abuse of a year in jail.”

Gomez has also criticized in the hunting areas at the end of the season, some hunters shoot their dogs to a well or well done to their dogs and hounds what they call “typing”, ie, hanging from a tree with the front legs touching the ground, intending to get rid of the animal, which, in case of being caught, “as much of them is 300 euros fine.”

In Leon, over two hundred people have called for celebrations or pursue illegal competitions in which torture or use animals, strict control of conditions in pet stores, conducting awareness campaigns and the construction of specific areas Dog in barrios.