Madrid (EFE).- About a thousand people have gathered this Sunday in the Plaza de Callao in Madrid to demand the prohibition of hunting activities with dogs, a protest also called in 45 other Spanish cities and which coincides with the end of the season hunting and with the imminent approval of the animal welfare law.
As David Rubio, spokesman for the No hunting platform, which organizes this mobilization every February, explained to EFE, “the end of the hunting season is the main reason for abandoning dogs in this country,” according to the Foundation. Affinity, which calculates that in 2021 abandonment affected 2.6% of the 6,552,000 dogs estimated to live in Spain.
This is “the only country in Europe that continues to allow hunting with dogs and is the country in the European Union that abandons the most dogs”, two facts between which, in Rubio’s opinion, there is a correlation, he has alleged.
Call for an end to hunting with dogs and aspire to a total ban
His platform, which ultimately aspires to a total ban on hunting activity, will position itself in favor of the animal protection law that will reach its final stage in Congress next week only if the text finally also applies to dogs. hunting, which for now are excluded from the ruling.
“It is illogical to make an animal protection law against abandonment and leave the dogs that most need protection out of the law.” Rubio has sentenced.
Also the deputy and president of Más País, Íñigo Errejón, has asserted in the protest in the center of Madrid that his formation will not support the legislative project that seeks to shield the rights of animals if it establishes that “there may be dogs with different rights, which so-called ‘hunting dogs’ have less protection and may be subject to abandonment or mistreatment”.
For his part, the president of the PACMA Animalist Party, Javier Luna, also present at the protest, has joined the demands for ‘No hunting’, and has stressed that every year there are “thousands of hunting dogs mistreated” before the “impassiveness of the Government”, and “millions of animals that die from the shots of hunters”.