The Guardia Civil in Almuñécar informed three Brits that they are being investigated over a case of alleged animal cruelty.

The three suspects are two women aged 55 and 21 and a 17-year-old, male youth. They were reported to Seprona (Guardia Civil) by an animal protection association in Motril.

The association had heard of an animal; an American Staffordshire Terrier, which was tied up without food nor water in a cortijo in an area of the municipality known as Los Bañuelos .

Officers from Seprona went to the cortijo and found the said animal tethered on a piece of chain around a metre in length and that it indeed had no food nor water and was surrounded by its own excrement.

Furthermore, the dog had no identity chip.

Further investigation uncovered that the cortijo had been rented out to a British woman who lived with her son and his girlfriend.

Apparently, the young couple had bought the dog and had taken it back to the dwelling. However, the couple had split and all the tenants had left the cortijo by the end of June: the mother and son went their way and the young woman her own, with none of them reportedly bothering to look after the dog.

The animal protection association, Olvidados, has now taken the animal into care.

Editorial comment: we foreigners are always quick to criticise the Spanish over their treatment of animals yet here is a clear case where we, ourselves, are no better.

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