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Doubts remain over new animal welfare law

New state legislation follows existing Catalan law in aiming to provide greater protection for animals, but questions remain over the limits of its reach

Dur­ing the pan­demic, there was a big rise in the num­ber of peo­ple get­ting a pet. Some 123,591 pets (85,000 dogs, 38,000 cats) were reg­is­tered in Cat­alo­nia in 2021, 14% more than in 2020, ac­cord­ing to data from the An­i­mal Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Archive. This rise must be seen in re­la­tion to new an­i­mal wel­fare leg­is­la­tion that came into ef­fect on Sep­tem­ber 29, and which has proven to be con­tro­ver­sial as hunt­ing dogs and bulls are ex­cluded from its pro­tec­tion.

In many ways, the Cata­lan an­i­mal rights law from 2008 is ahead of the new state leg­is­la­tion, in­clud­ing the for­ma­tion of the pi­o­neer­ing an­i­mal rights pro­tec­tion com­mis­sion of the Bar As­so­ci­a­tion of Barcelona, which until last De­cem­ber was chaired by its founder, the human rights lawyer, Magda Oranich.

The state law aims to pro­vide broad pro­tec­tion of an­i­mal rights, es­pe­cially as the leg­is­la­tion in many au­tonomous re­gions has long been in need of up­dat­ing. A new point is that it recog­nises an­i­mals as sen­tient be­ings, al­though Cata­lan law has done this for years. Yet the ex­panded pro­tec­tion is not af­forded to hunt­ing dogs, which were ex­cluded de­spite being among the an­i­mals in Spain most at risk of abuse and aban­don­ment. “It’s un­fair and cruel; the So­cial­ists gave in to pres­sure from the hunt­ing lobby,” says Oranich.

The new law also bans the dis­play of an­i­mals in shop win­dows and out­laws the prac­tice of putting stray an­i­mals down in dog ken­nels after they have been there un­claimed for 20 days. All of this has been law in Cat­alo­nia since 2003, when some 5,000 cats and dogs were put down every year in Barcelona, ac­cord­ing to Oranich.

Enric Solé runs an an­i­mal shel­ter in Barcelona that houses 65 dogs and 110 cats that has been open for al­most 80 years. “We’re not see­ing a rise in an­i­mal adop­tions; in fact it looks like they are slow­ing down,” says Solé, who points out that the num­bers of peo­ple adopt­ing pets “shot up” dur­ing the pan­demic, but adds that “there were quite a few peo­ple who took dogs on a whim, and then prob­lems began to arise, caus­ing pet aban­don­ment to sky­rocket”.

The man­ager of the shel­ter points out that the new law will only be as good as its en­force­ment. Mi­crochips have been manda­tory in Cat­alo­nia since 2003, but he es­ti­mates that half of the dogs and cats in the coun­try do not have one.

An­other point in the new law is the re­quire­ment for pet own­ers to com­plete a train­ing course be­fore get­ting a pet. How­ever, Oranich has doubts about how that might be en­forced, a po­si­tion that Solé shares. They also agree that the most im­por­tant thing is rais­ing aware­ness and that even if the new law falls short, it is nev­er­the­less a step in the right di­rec­tion.

Pet abandonment

According to Spain’s Ministry of Social Rights, around 300,000 animals are abandoned every year, and nearly 100,000 healthy animals are put down in shelters and kennels. The two remedies aimed at helping to avoid pet abandonment and its consequences provided for in both the Catalan law and the new state law are identifying pets with microchips and sterilisation. According to information from the Spanish government, 285,000 dogs and cats were taken in by animal shelters last year. At the same time, the new law introduces tougher penalties of up to three years in prison for causing the death of an animal through mistreatment. Meanwhile, dogs cannot be left alone for more than one day and cats for no more than three, nor can animals be left for long periods of time on terraces, balconies, basements or inside vehicles.

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