FEATURE
euroweeklynews.com
9 - 15 February 2023
EWN 43
A-hunting we go Here be monsters CASSANDRA NASH PEDRO SANCHEZ already has one headache a fullblown migraine in fact caused by the Only Yes Means Yes law promoted by the PSOE’s coalition part ner, Unidas Podemos. Now UP’s hackles have risen over the Animal Welfare law promoted by Social Rights minister Ione Belarra because the text excludes hunting dogs, sheep dogs and those used by the police and armed forces. Belarra, who is also secretary general of Podemos, the other half of the Unidas Podemos twoparty alliance, is not happy. She is frequently not happy about many things, and recently made head lines after describing Juan Roig, Mer cadona’s relatively benevolent presi dent, as a “pitiless capitalist” lining his pockets at the expense of the poor. Most people, especially those who do their shopping at Mercadona, would not agree with Belarra’s take on Roig but would concede that the lives of Spain’s hunting dogs can be very grim and their fate invariably worse.
Trouble is brewing because Sanchez refuses to include working dogs’ protec tion in the bill. Spain’s hunting sector generates more than €5 billion a year in economic activity according to Deloitte, and obvi ously should be afforded every consid eration. But there is more to it than that. Months ago, PSOE party headquar ters in Madrid had to reassure rural mayors up for reelection next May that the new Animal Welfare law intro duced by Unidas Podemos was not go ing to spoil hunters’ fun. Hunting in Spain generally means shooting and although killing animals for fun is an elite pastime, it is also, and always has been, a hobby for the non elite in the depopulated country areas that are less inclined to vote PSOE than in the past. Most of those hunters use dogs and although many should ponder on the new law’s declaration that animals are sentient beings, it is unlikely to stop them from hanging podencos from trees once their useful days are over. Or, indeed, encourage them to vote for the PSOE, let alone Unidas Podemos.
LINDA HALL A BRITISH family returned from Lan zarote not long ago complaining that they all came down with food poison ing after eating their hotel buffet’s halfcooked beef. Worse still, they said, they spotted cockroaches near the outdoor dining area. Undercooked beef? Possibly, as the Spanish happily eat it dripping with blood, but I’m surprised about the cockroaches. They’re still around but less in evi dence than formerly, thanks to town hall fumigation programmes. When I first saw people wearing hazmat suits carrying weird equipment and peer ing into drains in the small inland city where I now live, I was initially wor ried, but reassured to learn they were killing off the cockroach population. That wasn’t the case many years ago when I lived in a semirural area on the coast and cockroaches were still free to roam, along with rats and snakes. We lived in the bottom half of a
rambling old house surrounded by fruit trees, vegetable patches and fal low land which our cats patrolled and hunted. One day, Skittles, the biggest and fiercest, returned with a small snake in his mouth and dropped it at my feet. I was outside with Marcela our landlady as we gardened together, and I stopped talking and shrieked in horror. Marcela, a countrywoman practically twice my age, raised an eyebrow, bent down and picked up the snake with her secateurs. Reach ing for mine she proceeded to snip the dangling snake into neat sections. “You don’t want one of those get ting into the house, now do you,” she said, sensing that I was going to shriek again. Mopping the porch not long after, I lifted the doormat outside the front door and saw what appeared to be a neatly coiled belt stuck to it. A closer look revealed that it was a slim snake with pretty marking which was quite flattened and very dead. But I shud dered then and shudder now to won der how many ever made it indoors without my knowing.
