Spanish horses left to starve in wake of economic slump

Charity says reports of starving animals have doubled since construction boom ended in 2008
Wild horses in Sabucedo, Spain
Charities say some owners who bought horses during Spain's economic boom have left them to starve since the bubble burst at the end of 2008. Photograph: Miguel Vidal/Reuters

The 80 pure-red Andalucian horses would have each been worth tens of thousands of euros just a few years ago, but by the time Concordia Márquez got to them they had been left to die of starvation.

The horses were part of a tragic fallout from Spain's economic crisis, which came on the back of horse-buying sprees by people who grew wealthy during a prolonged construction boom.

"It was the classic move by the newly rich," said Márquez, in charge of Spain's only horse sanctuary. "They bought a Mercedes car and a horse, just to show off. Now that they have no money, it is the horse who suffers first."

Some owners ignore multiple warnings. Earlier this month police in Cáceres, western Spain, found the emaciated corpse of a foal near to where another was eaten by dogs in November. Two mares who starved to death had been dug up there by police the previous year. "We take the case to court, but nothing seems to happen," says Isabel Alcalá of the Cáceres Animal Protection Association.

Márquez's mobile phone rings constantly, often with calls from people spotting yet more horses with the look of not having eaten for days or weeks.

The CYD Santa María charity she runs from a farm near Málaga, in the south, found itself inundated with calls as soon as Spain's residential property bubble burst at the end of 2008.

Within a few months she was getting almost half as many calls as normal. Within a year the number had doubled. "And it has stayed like that since then," she said.

As building work ground to a halt, many owners lost interest in their four-legged status symbols. "Many horses are just left to starve," Márquez said. "Others are in stables, but the owners stop paying the bills." Some are let loose but as they have been reared by hand, don't know how to survive in the wild. "I've seen eight who were attacked by dogs just this year," she said. "Others get run over by cars or hit by trains. Seven people have died locally in traffic accidents caused by horses in the past four months."

Putting a horse down and disposing of its corpse legally is expensive. The market for living horses has collapsed and selling for meat, in a country with little taste for horse flesh, is a loss-making proposal. Municipal police forces, which are meant to deal with abandoned animals, often want nothing to do with them.

A more worrying effect of the crisis is a growth in deliberate cruelty. "It is as if people were taking their frustration out on the horses, as though the crisis has released the beast inside them," she said. One frequent injury is to find horses whose lower legs are full of shotgun pellets. "That is done by people who say they like to make the horse dance," she explains.

The fight to get abusers punished recently saw a major victory when a man had 21 horses taken away and was banned from keeping animals again.

Spain is only slowly trying to bring animal protection enforcement up to European standards, though Márquez thinks municipal refuges could prove self-financing. However, her charity has to confine its activities to the southern region of Andalucia, which accounts for just 18% of Spain's population. "I can't handle any more than that," she said.