Petition to ban horse carriages to be delivered on Tuesday

The petition that was raised to outlaw horse-driven carriages in Palma has not as yet met the objective of obtaining 100,000 signatures, but the organiser of the petition, Luis Moreira, will nevertheless be presenting the petition to Palma’s city council on Tuesday next week, when he will be accompanied by representatives of two animal protection associations in the Balearics.
The campaign to have the carriages banned was sparked off by the news and image of a horse which had collapsed because of heat stroke in front of the Cathedral in early April, at a time when the temperature was nowhere near as high as it is during the summer.
In petitioning the council for a ban, it was observed that numerous incidents have occurred in the past in which carriages have been hit by cars driven by impatient or negligent drivers, while horses have died because of heat stroke and/or excessively long hours of work.
The petition drew attention to an incident last year when a horse collapsed on the Avenida Jaume III and was then brutally beaten by the carriage driver in full view of passers-by, who included tourists.
Horses undertake their work in both high and low temperatures, 365 days a year; even when it occasionally snows in Palma, they work.
 And as they operate in a city where emissions can be high, they can suffer from respiratory problems because of inhalation, while the hard surfaces can cause their legs to weaken.