The Animalist Party PACMA has managed to collect some 17,500 signatures by hand in three weeks to request the regulation of fireworks in the municipality of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
The coordinator in the province, Cristo Gil, affirms that a meeting has already been requested with the mayor, José Manuel Bermúdez, to address the situation and reach an agreement that allows people and animals to coexist “in a healthy and safe way” with the festivities. .
In fact, more than 140 companies, murgas, comparsas, animal protection entities, activists and individuals have joined the massive collection of signatures, the formation collects in a note.
“We wanted people to get involved and for the signatures to be manual to record the great social problems that are experienced on this island every time certain dates arrive,” explains Daniel Bisshopp, founder of Animals Warriors and a party volunteer.
Every year, he continues, “countless animals die, get sick and go astray from the noise of the firecrackers, and the elderly and people with high sensitivity often have to flee or find a way to abstract themselves because the city turns into chaos.”
From PACMA they point out that the campaign is at the municipal level because noise regulation is also municipal. “For us it would have been much more satisfying to be able to do a collection for the whole island, but the reality is that each Town Hall is responsible for their parties and their noises,” they indicate.
Currently, PACMA also carries out a similar collection for the municipality of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Gil added that the initial claim is to “regulate” the use of fireworks since they are “aware” that it is “impossible to completely eliminate” their use of it, hence they have opted for a “feasible request” that is focus on the limitation of use in terms of times, dates, areas, points of sale, minimum ages “and, of course, an urgent replacement by silent devices.”
Waiting for a meeting with the mayor
The coordinator, who assures that he “had been wanting to carry out this campaign for years”, states that the first and most important thing is that any type of sound artifact that is launched must be done away from the urban center in general, from any house in particular and at a safe distance. of any settlement of birds or other animals.
Veterinarians and exotics experts such as Enrique González de Vetcali have contributed to the dissemination of the initiative by producing informative videos that explain how fireworks affect these living beings.
The Animalist Party also traveled to Güímar to collect the testimony of Teresa Rodríguez, founder of the Josefina Rivero Sanctuary, in which two dogs have died from heart attacks on festive dates, and also where Gil spent the night on Christmas Eve 2018 to demonstrate the suffering of animals due to fireworks.
The animal supporters now await the mayor’s reception to initiate measures to help solve the situation that worries so many Tenerife residents and hope that, “with time and by example, all the municipalities of the islands will begin to address the problem”.
