Ibai is one of the latest donkeys we have rescued. He is a 5 year old donkey that was living inside a small, ruined building in a marginal neighbourhood in Adra (Almería’s province). He only had 10 square metres of living space and he hardly ever got fed, so he was approaching starvation. Needless to say he did not get any veterinary attention either. The donkey was used by gypsies to pull a cart with ill-fitting harnessing that has made him sore and wounded in several places.

Sometimes we are lost for words when trying to express the helplessness we feel following the outcome of some cases, in spite of all the hard work and enthusiasm we put in. Such is the case of a mule we recently tried to rescue in a village near Seville in spite of our prompt response.

These are the details of the case:

Following our mission of helping donkeys and mules all over Spain, we were present at this year’s “El Rocío” to help protect the welfare of the equines at the festival, and to prevent their mistreatment. “El Rocío” is one of the biggest Spanish festivals held in June eachyear and the biggest, most crowded pilgrimage in the country. Thousands of people, and animals, flock to this particular spot in South West Spain to participate in this religious festival. What our welfare team found there, however, was far from religious indeed; it was a scene fit for Dante’s Inferno.

When in June 2013 we received a call from Los Caballos Luna, horse rescue centre, denouncing the bad state that a group of 40 equines were in an illegal farm in Callosa de Segura, Alicante, we couldn't have ever imagined that it would take us more than 7 months to take them out of there and bring the owner to justice.

Emaciated donkeys and horses tied up with short chains 24 hours a day, with no access to water and fed with rotten vegetables when they were lucky, very overgrown hooves and terrible hygienic conditions is what we found when we first checked the farm.

Not long ago, we had a phone call from one of our supporters at The Donkey Sanctuary headquarters in the UK, telling us about the bad conditions some donkeys were facing at a ranch in Catalonia.

The place is called Rancho Mestres and we are pressing legal charges against them. Five donkeys were kept there without the care or proper facilities these animals need. Their hooves were in a terrible state (in fact one of the donkeys has needed prosthesis to be able to walk properly) and they were left without food for days. There is an animal that is actually in real danger still.