Introduction – I
Every day in Spain the growing awareness of the public regarding the need to guarantee the protection of animals in general and, particularly, of animals that live in the human environment, as beings endowed with sensitivity whose rights must be protected, is becoming more evident, as stated in article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and the Spanish Civil Code. Thus, the autonomous communities and town halls have echoed the need to develop regulations that advance in the protection of animals, their wellbeing, and the rejection of situations of mistreatment towards them, which has given rise to a heterogeneous set of norms that establish protection mechanisms of diverse scope, depending on the territorial area in which they are located.
The concept of “animal welfare”, defined by the World Organisation for Animal Health as “the physical and mental state of an animal in relation to the conditions in which it lives and dies”, has been included in profuse regulations, both national and international. Thus, the aforementioned article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union states that it must be taken into account that animals are sentient beings «when formulating and applying Union policies on agriculture, fishing, transport, the internal market, research and technological development and space…”, while the Civil Code establishes the obligation of the owner, possessor or holder of any other right over an animal to exercise their rights over it and their duties of care, respecting their quality of being sentient and their welfare.
The main objective of this law is not so much to guarantee the welfare of animals by evaluating the conditions offered to them, but to regulate the recognition and protection of the dignity of animals by society. Therefore, it does not regulate animals as one more element within our economic activity to which certain conditions are due on account of their ability to feel, but rather regulates our behaviour towards them as living beings within our living environment.
This law includes a series of concepts and terms that, based on this consideration, unify and harmonise the existing definitions in the current regulations in force, for a better application based on the principles of effectiveness and legal certainty.
In Spain, one in three households lives with at least one pet, and thus, according to the information resulting from the pet registries of the autonomous communities, there are currently more than thirteen million registered and identified pet animals. Despite this, there are studies such as the one carried out jointly by the Affinity Foundation and the Department of Psychiatry and Legal Medicine of the Autonomous University of Barcelona that indicate that only 27.7% of the dogs that arrive at shelters are identified with a microchip, while in the case of cats it is reduced to 4.3%. This implies that the majority of companion animals are outside official control, as they are not legally identified, with the risk that this entails.
In this context, the European Parliament Resolution of February 12, 2020, on the protection of the internal market and the rights of consumers in the European Union against the negative consequences of the illegal trade in pets, Spain being one of the main countries of origin and destination of the pet trade in the European Union, places special emphasis on the need to establish measures against the illegal trade in pet animals and, in particular, establishes: a mandatory system for the registration of dogs and cats in the European Union, a definition of commercial breeding facilities on a large European scale, the tightening of sanctions in terms of animal abuse and the promotion of adoption against the purchase of companion animals, providing adequate financial and other material and non-material support to animal rescue centres and animal protection non-governmental organisations or entities.
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