Thanks to the alarm being raised by a foreign tourist, the suffering of neglected and starved animals has been stopped.

The woman, whose nationality was not divulged in the original article in the provincial press, discovered around a dozen horses and two asses in a lamentable state; starved, hobbled and seemingly forgotten, in a field next to the Charca de Suárez in Motril. She had been visiting this wildlife sanctuary which is for primarily migrating water fowl.

The reason that the animals were starving to death was that they were completely hobbled, meaning that they couldn’t reach grazing or drink from close-to-hand sources.

The Guardia Civil unit that deals with animal protection and environmental matters in general, Seprona, carried out an inspection of the animals and tracked down their owner, who resides in Órgiva. Accoring to Seprona, the horses, asses and a pony were effectively ‘abandoned.’ Furthermore some of the horses had festering injuries caused by chaffing ropes.

The owner, who is a livestock dealer has already been brought before a magistrate to make a statement, standing accused of animal cruelty. Furthermore, this is not the first time that this man has been involved in this kind of neglect, as there have already been two denuncias taken out against him in recent years for this kind of heartless behaviour.

Simply put, the man very rarely bothered coming down to the coast from Órgiva to take care of the animals. Such was the state of things that when a vet was called in by the authorities, one of the asses was not even able to stand. As for he horses, they were literally bags of bones.

For the time being, the animals, after being treated, are remaining in the said field, but now free to move about and to graze.

It is a sad consequence of the present economical climate that many horses that were bought during the boom have since been abandoned after their new owners became unable to finance their upkeep. This is a big problem here on the coast, with the Salobreña Town Hall, for example, finding around 50 abandoned horses during the course of 2011.

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)