The PACMA Animalist Party has managed to collect in three weeks some 17,500 signatures by hand to request the regulation of the pyrotechnics in Santa Cruz from 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, troupes, animal protection entities, activists and individuals have joined the massive collection of signatures, collects training 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 designated dates arrive,” explains Daniel Bisshopp, founder of ‘Animales Guerreros’ and a party volunteer. .
Every year, he continues, “countless animals die, get sick and get lost because of the noise of 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.”
Since 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 make a collection for the entire island, but the reality is that each City Council is responsible for its parties and their noise”, they indicate.
Currently, PACMA also carries out a similar collection for the municipality of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Gil has added that the initial intention is to “regulate” the use of pyrotechnics 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 for silent devices”.
WAITING FOR A MEETING WITH THE MAYOR TO DISCUSS PYROTECHNICS IN SANTA CRUZ
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 device that is launched must be done far from the urban center in general, from any home in particular and at a reasonable distance. from any settlement of birds or other animals.
Veterinarians and experts in exotics such as Enrique González de Vetcali have contributed to the dissemination of the initiative with the production of informative videos that explain how fireworks affect these living beings.
The Animalista Party also traveled to Güímar to collect the testimony of Teresa Rodríguez, founder of the Josefina Rivero Sanctuary, in which two dogs have died of heart attacks on festive dates, and also where Gil spent the night on Christmas Eve 2018 to demonstrate the suffering of the animals because of the pyrotechnics.
The animal supporters now await the mayor’s welcome to initiate measures to help solve the situation that worries so many Tenerife residents and they hope that, “with time and example, all the municipalities of the islands will begin to address the problem.”
