Catalonia has experienced this week the worst and the best reaction of the local police when it comes to guaranteeing the minimum safety and animal welfare. The praise corresponds this time to the firefighters and the municipal agents of Terrassa, where an uncivil owner left his dog, a golden retriever, for three days on a balcony, without shade, food or water and with temperatures that reached 37 degrees. .
The dog was so desperate that he was trying to jump into the void when he was rescued. The news enjoyed a wide echo from the moment that the journalist Anna Punsí (@punsix) spread it on her X account (formerly Twitter), an essential logbook on current events. The animal has been saved and the owner has been sued. They could fine him with a penalty of between 750 and 3,000 euros.
The Altarriba Foundation, a capital NGO in defense of animal rights, regrets that local police forces do not always act in the same way. In fact, this non-profit organization headed by the lawyer Yolanda Valbuena, has requested explanations (so far, no response) from the Tossa de Mar City Council (la Selva, Girona) for the alleged inaction of its local police officers.
The alarm went off on the 20th when several families heading to the beach saw a French-registered car where a dog remained. The owners had lowered the window only a few centimeters so that their small pet could breathe, which was very suffocated and enduring temperatures that could be around 40 degrees in there. The citizens called the local police, but to no avail.
Many voices have charged against the imprudence that the owners committed. They are not the first nor the only ones. The Altarriba Foundation knows of animals abandoned in cars with a bowl of water, as if they could survive for hours and hours in a place that has become a real oven. Those involved in the Tossa de Mar case, a mature couple, claimed that they suffered a medical emergency and did not know where to leave the dog.
The underlying problem, insists the lawyer Yolanda Valbuena, is another. It never occurs to anyone that if the light from a street lamp burns out, it would be the residents of the street themselves who would fix the problem. “However, that is what happens with the protection of animals in numerous municipalities: the city councils delegate to the citizens. Why do they do it? If it is due to lack of cash, it is as if we refused to pay the IBI due to lack of money”.
The police failure to appear forced citizens to act on their own. It was not necessary to break the window and someone managed to lower it enough to rescue the animal, delivered hours later to its owners. The Altarriba Foundation introduced animal abuse into the Penal Code and managed to banish sacrifices in animal shelters in Catalonia. But much remains to be done…
Its director has demanded explanations in writing and by telephone from the Tossa de Mar City Council (how many agents are on the staff, how many were working that day, why they did not act). Many people would not have dared to force a window for fear of a crime of damage, “although it is not a crime to open or break a window if it is to save the life of an animal.” And that’s what those people did: save a life.
