Town halls convicted for not having policies to protect animals

There are more and more cases of town halls being taken to court for not helping the most vulnerable animals in their municipality, which could be feral cats that are injured, sick or run over; or could be dogs or cats that have been abandoned or lost – in which case their owner is unknown at first so the duty of care and looking out for their wellbeing is the responsibility of town halls.

Today I am going to briefly mention three cases that received a lot of coverage in the media and which I am sure marked a turning point after the town halls involved were convicted.

Case 1: Madrid city hall

In 2014, six years ago now, Madrid city hall was convicted by a court for challenging decisions by public authorities ( juzgado contencioso administrativo) and ordered to pay back three fines it had imposed on a person who looked after feral cat colonies. The council had fined this person for looking after feral cats, not registering them, not getting them vaccinated and giving them shelter.

City hall had attributed ownership of these cats and the responsibility to care for them to the carer, as if they were this person’s pets and the obligations were the same as for any pet cat owner.

But city hall was wrong in this case because these were feral cats, i. e. unsociable domestic cats; therefore the responsibility was and is the council’s and not the carer’s.

Thanks to the laudable work of Madrid lawyer Arancha Sanz, a specialist in legislation regarding animals, the court dealing with this case was clear that these three fines were illegal and therefore Madrid city hall was ordered to refund the fines and to pay fines itself.

Case 2: Brenes town hall in Sevilla

This town hall was ordered by a ‘ contencioso administrativo’ court to pay invoices that had been submitted to it during 2016 by an animal welfare association which took charge of seven animals that were ill or had been run over, injured or abandoned, many of them females with litters.

This association had presented several letters to the town hall registry demanding payment of the veterinary expenses for treating these animals ( which had no known owner and were in situations that endangered their lives). Since they did not receive a reply, they did not hesitate to hire the services of a lawyer specialised in animal legislation, Lorena Lozano in Sevilla.

The result was that the judge who tried this case saw clearly that the responsibility to pay the veterinary expenses demanded by the animal welfare association was legally down to the town hall, because it had not taken charge of these animals or the costs of doing so, and it did not have an agreement with this association to collect stray animals.

In 2018, Brenes town hall was ordered to pay the expenses ( apart from one invoice that had not been presented to the court in the correct manner), which came to a total of € 2,426.

Case 3: Garachico town hall in Santa Cruz de Tenerife

This town hall was convicted in July 2020 to pay veterinary costs that a private individual had assumed to save the life of a kitten which was in a critical condition and had to be hospitalised at a veterinary clinic.

In this case, a couple had found the dying kitten in 2018, but after contacting the authorities and seeing that nobody was taking charge of the animal, they took it to a vet where it was hospitalised due to the seriousness of its condition.

This case was taken to court by the couple who found it with the help of a lawyer called Patricia,

who also happened to end up adopting the cat.

In the end Garachico town hall was ordered to pay the expenses that the couple were demanding, which amounted to € 770, plus the court costs.

Fortunately, an increasing number of people do not look the other way and not only act to help a destitute animal, but also take the legal steps to demand that the expenses are reclaimed from the authority that is responsible for them. Not only this, at the same time we are educating town halls and society about this subject.

At the IPA animal protection institute ( www. institutodeproteccionanimal. com/ es) we advise people in the public and private sectors who work in animal protection matters. We also carry out educational work, providing training not only with a blog but also by giving courses.

For more information about animal law in Spain and Raquel’s online courses in the subject, see her website www. deanimals. com