Animal rights group in Mijas to hold protest to demand end of donkey taxi service

Lorena Cádiz

Mijas

Wednesday, 21 August 2024, 12:12 | Updated 12:20h.

The controversy over the Mijas donkey taxis has been going on for a long time, although every year, especially in summer, it intensifies, mainly due to the increased presence of tourists on the Costa del Sol. It is a paradoxical situation because the donkey taxi service was originally created to take tourists around Mijas Pueblo and that is still its purpose, but there are also many foreign tourists who see this practice as a form of animal abuse and openly reject it.

Some time ago, French national Anne Blitz started a Facebook group calling for the release of the working donkeys and horses in Mijas. She still remembers the first time she visited Mijas and saw the donkeys in the 1970s. Since then, she visited frequently, until five years ago, when she left behind her career as a European civil servant to settle in Mijas and enjoy her retirement.

Blitz doesn't understand how the practice of donkey taxis continues to this day and so "since I've been here, I've started to get active to ask for this to stop".

"I have met with politicians and I have gone to demonstrations organised by animal activists, but I realised that very few people went and so I decided to create my group on social media to try to mobilise more people," she explained. This group now has more than 1,500 people and "they are the ones who have asked me to organise a protest".

The protest will take place on Thursday 22 August at 1pm in front of the tourist office in Mijas Pueblo. It already has the corresponding permissions and according to its organiser, "all those attending should dress in white and wear a rope around their necks". The idea is to generate a powerful image that will get the group's message across.

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Among the things that the organisers are calling for, which they believe will be backed by a significant number of people demonstrating, is the release by sale of the donkeys, which could be financed, the group says, by the council, private funds or crowdfunding. Once the animals are acquired, the group proposes the creation of one or more "sanctuaries", in other words, spaces in nature where they can live and be cared for. For the economic maintenance of these spaces, they propose the organisation of school and tourist visits.

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Finally, in order to provide a solution to the operators who currently run the donkey taxi business, the group believes that a good option would be to replace the animals with 'tuk tuks' (three-wheeled vehicles very common in Asia), which according to the proposal, could be customised in memory of the donkeys and with which the service of transferring tourists through the streets of Mijas Pueblo would be provided.

The town hall acknowledged a few days ago that they were aware of all the complaints about the donkeys, especially "from non-resident foreigners", who "are unaware" of the situation, according to the councillor for animal welfare, Marco Cortés.

Cortés defended the fact that in recent times the number of drinking water troughs has been increased and the ropes that hold them in place have been lengthened to give them more space. "Many things are said that are not true due to lack of knowledge. Most donkeys don't go out more than once a day," he said.

Despite these considerations, at the beginning of August the council issued a municipal bylaw reducing the service of donkey taxis and horse-drawn carriages in situations of a weather alert for heat. Specifically, the law states that in situations of an amber or red warning issued by Spain's state meteorological agency (Aemet) they should not provide the service. When the warning is yellow, the service will not be operational between 2pm and 6pm.

"The situation we are going through with constant alerts for high temperatures made the existence of this bylaw, on which the council has been working for some time, very necessary. Above all, health must come first and what we are looking for is to guarantee that the wellbeing of both muleteers and the animals prevails," said Cortés.