The City Council of Puerto de la Cruz has made the decision to immediately cease the public activity of the La Rosaleda Cat Protection Association. A thoughtful and decided measure with the consensus of the presidency of the private center, whose current situation makes it impossible to safely care for any animal that may enter the association.
The report on which this decision is based detects veterinary, sanitary, environmental and urban breaches in the aforementioned facility. An accumulation of insurmountable circumstances in the short term, in facilities that according to the report are obsolete and that could become a source of infection for the animals themselves.
Last May, the Department of Animal Welfare received a request for municipal protection from the cat protector La Rosaleda, residing in the municipality, who declared that they were going through a very complicated health situation. In the request, she warned of the death of 46 cats in three months as a result of multiple infections that, despite all the efforts made, could not be controlled.
For this reason and under the presidency of the Protective Association since last January by Idaira Esther González, the beginning of an investigation process by the consistory was thus marked, which would extend since then and in which they have The president of the Council of Veterinary Colleges of the Canary Islands and president of the Veterinary College of Tenerife participated, together with the municipal technicians of the Environment and Health, the Department of Community Welfare and the Local Police, in addition to the SEPRONA Civil Guard unit .
The City Council, hand in hand with the specific councilor delegated in Animal Welfare Alberto Castilla, thus managed to organize a complete team of the highest level, with whom a detailed report of the circumstances of the refuge facilities has been prepared. A process during which the association apparently managed to respond to the serious problem initially raised, managing to curb the number of deaths that were occurring. The report prepared develops compliance with the corresponding laws on animal ownership, which puts in the hands of the municipalities to ensure compliance with the established standards.
The action, which ends this process with the cessation of public activity, allows them to continue with the one that already exists with the cats that are in the center, always with the aim of ensuring the dignity and well-being of the individuals who are inside the center.
After this declaration by the municipality after exhaustive analysis of the facilities, it realizes the due compliance that must be given to the existing ordinances and laws, remembering that animal abandonment is a crime punishable by imprisonment. That is why, in order to prosecute this type of infraction that the protector has ensured for many years that it occurs outside its facilities, police surveillance will be intensified in the vicinity of it.
In the same way, the case will be raised to higher authorities and a work table will be created with the areas involved, which will advise the association at all levels in order to be able to recover its public activity in the near future, if it so considers it so.
