A generationIn northeastern Spain Catalonia, A huge bull named Pedro was poking his head from the barn door to look at some sheep. If the sanctuary volunteers allow him, he will stay there for two hours; he will have to be tempted by snacks so that the sheep can go out to graze. Pedro knows the routine; he has been here since he was a child, when he was bottle-fed by volunteers. He leads a fascinating life-he is full, he wanders around, he watches the sheep, he sleeps; when he dies, it will be natural causes.
“He is huge!” I told Olivia Gómez de Zamora, a veterinary assistant from Madrid, who spent a lot of time coaxing Pedro out of the barn.
Gómez de Zamora told me that this type of cow is raised for milk. “Adult males are slaughtered for meat,” she said. “So we never saw them.”
Fundación Santuario Gaia and El Hogar are two of approximately 20 animal sanctuaries in Spain. Vegetarians are committed to saving animals and creating a place where they can live without having to work or be slaughtered. Employees and volunteers spend a lot of time in each other’s companies. Some might call it fierce: they live and work together, cook and eat together, and leisure activities such as movie nights and debates.Sanctuary Pass WeChat, Where they share veterinary information and coordinate animal rescues.
We are accustomed to seeing dogs and cats free from abuse or neglect, but in Gaia and El Hogar-Barcelona is about two hours away on both sides by car-most animals are pigs, cows, goats and chickens. Gaia co-founder, 43-year-old animal rights activist and veterinarian Coque Fernández Abella said: “We hope it applies to so-called farm animals because they are the most forgotten. No one takes care of them because they are considered products.
“From childhood to adulthood,” he added, “killing pigs for eating at home is very common. Because I was young, I had to help-it was horrible because of the screams, but you have to do this. I remember When we rescued our first pig, the memory of the killing came back to my mind. After all the bad things I have done in the past, I should help the animals now.”
Sanctuary is a haven for animals. They are not killed for meat or restricted for dairy production, but live happily and freely. They are fed and exercised, they get medicine when they are sick, they recover when they are injured, and—the main privilege that most farm animals are denied—are allowed to live longer.
Vegetarianism In Spain, this kind of care for animals seems surprising. Matador Translated directly as “killer”Of course, animal rescue vegans in bullfighting and Black legs?
“Indeed, we really like ham and bullfighting,” said photographer Ana Palacios, who spent two weeks in the two reserves, capturing their daily activities. “But in the UK, you guys hunt foxes!” Although the carnivorous tradition is there, especially in the south, “it is not that popular among young people,” Palacios said.but Vegetarianism Ham is becoming more and more popular in many countries-even the ham capital of the world. From 2017 to 2019, study abroad in Spain Green revolution A plant-based diet trend was discovered. In 2017, 0.2% of Spaniards were identified as vegetarians; by 2019, it was 0.5%. Vegetarians make up 1.5% of the Spanish population. Animal welfare is the second most common reason for becoming vegetarians (23.8%) after health (67%).
Marta Sampaio, a 24-year-old Gaia employee, said that when she decided to stop eating meat when she was 15, her parents were worried. Now, whenever she gets sick, her passionate carnivorous father is convinced that her diet is to blame.She traveled to Spain Find a place to work with animals from Lisbon. After receiving several months of training as a veterinary assistant, she searched for a vegetarian sanctuary on Google in Spain and started working as a volunteer in Gaia. Unexpectedly, she found that she had sympathy for chickens. Her first was a chick named Anji, who was brought in by a girl and she found her wandering on the road alone. Because chickens are raised to lay eggs every day, throughout the year (rather than about a week, two or three times a year), they often get sick. Sampaio was called the “Crazy Chicken Girl” because of his habit of taking patients home. “Anji is still a baby and has no siblings, so she can’t be with other chickens,” she said. “I left her at home, and she and I slept in my shoulders.”
Gómez de Zamora quit his job as a veterinary assistant in Madrid and went to work in Gaia, where he stayed for two years. Now back in Madrid, she still works with the reserve, but is full of sadness for an animal she cared for there. When she thought of Juana the Goat, her eyes improved, her voice crackled, and there was a lump on her spine that caused her to be paralyzed. “The time I spent with Juana was very good and very painful, because we know her prognosis is complicated and the moment we can no longer do anything is coming,” she said. “It’s difficult: you have to be nice to her because her mind is still good, even if her health is not good. You have to make sure that she still enjoys life and sits in a wheelchair in the sun.”
It’s easy to think of a vegan animal sanctuary as a soft, emotional place, but it also has a steel side. Animals are not only rescued from the roadside: sometimes they are executed by the state. In 2017, El Hogar Reserve Made headlines After saving a bullfight named Margarita.
Margarita has an irresponsible master. “When he and his friends were drunk, they would chase her on horseback,” said El Hogar founder Elena Tova. “She is still afraid of men.” The authorities found that he had not legally registered margaritas; according to Spanish law, unregistered cows must be killed because there is no vaccine record and their meat may make people sick and even cause a pandemic. .
“They can’t explain,” Tovar said, and she explained time and time again that she wanted to take Margarita to a vegan shrine and live her natural life. They can guarantee that she will never be used to eat meat. “They don’t want to change the law or make an exception. So we created a page change.org Called not to kill Margaret. In less than a month, it obtained 190,000 signatures. She persuaded the owner to let them take the margarita. “But it’s not enough: the vet still wants to kill her.” They found one excuse after another to drown us in red tape, until a judge who felt about us wrote to me, “They won’t give you cows”-they have already dated to kill her. So I went one night, under the cover of darkness, and stole Margarita. “
She insisted that she was not afraid, and pointed out that the move was technically legal: the owner signed a contract that allowed her to enter the farm and took Marguerite away, so it did not break in and enter. But the authorities—Towa called her the next day to explain where Margarita was—in her words, “very angry. They showed up in the sanctuary. Then the media came, the TV cameras came—we On the radio and newspapers.” In the end, the power of public opinion forced the law to change. “Now, in Catalonia, when a cow is unidentified, they can’t kill her.”
Tova was only nine years old when she started taking care of abandoned dogs and cats. She even stole snails and crabs from the supermarket to avoid being killed. When her parents refused to let her take more animals home, she took the food to an olive tree where the animals knew where to wait for her. But isn’t it a price to pay for this level of care and concern for creatures that are abandoned and abused, sick and injured, and eventually die? Yes, she said, it is true. “We are happy, but deep down there is a sadness that is hard to get rid of. So you have to be pragmatic, focus on the positive things you can change, think about animals, not yourself and your feelings. “
Although maintaining operations is an ongoing financial struggle, both shelters have bigger dreams. Fernández Abela hopes to expand Gaia’s scale so that they can save more than 500 animals currently under care, and hope that their stories will turn more people into veganism. Tova in El Hogar promised that “if it kills her”, a small animal hospital will be opened on the spot so that terminally ill animals can die in their own homes.
As for Palacios, about a year ago, she discovered that she had changed while filming the sanctuary. “What really impressed me was the deep connection between animals and humans,” she said. She has never eaten meat since then.
