Horses abandoned in Spain during austere times (PHOTOS)
A picture taken on March 5, 2013 shows a worker of the Association CyD Santamaria taking care of horses in Alhaurin el Grande, near Malaga. In Spain’s boom years, they were a rich family’s status symbol: pet horses to ride at the weekend. Now abandoned in the crisis, they are plodding in their tens of thousands to the slaughterhouse. At the end of a bumpy country lane in southern Andalucia, Spain’s farming and horse-rearing heartland, Virginia Solera helps run a shelter for the luckier cast-offs — victims, along with millions of citizens, of Spain’s abrupt economic downturn.
The economic crisis has claimed more victims, this time, of the equine breed. Once purchased as proud status symbols of rich families, the horses of Spain have been abandoned.
Tens of thousands of them have headed to the slaughter house, according to Agence France Presse.