CAMPAIGNERS call it Spain's "secret shame", and now a Scottish dog groomer who has spent the past two years rescuing dozens of the country's maltreated hunting dogs is calling on animal lovers here to back efforts to end the cruelty.
Irene Allan and her husband, Steve, ran a mobile dog grooming business in Lanarkshire for 30 years before trading it in in 2009 to seek a more relaxing lifestyle in south-east Spain.
But seven years later the animal loving couple from Glenmavis, near Airdrie, is now at the forefront of the fight to protect Spain's most neglected canine, the podenco, and Mrs Allan is bringing the message back to Scotland with a rally in Glasgow on May 1.
The event, organised to coincide with simultaneous marches in London and Manchester, will see supporters gather in George Square to distribute leaflets before walking to Glasgow Green. Dog lovers are welcome to attend and bring their pets along.
The 57-year-old has rescued and rehabilitated around 60 dogs at her 'Hope for Podencos' sanctuary in Orihuela since she took up their cause two years ago, and has found loving homes for them as far afield as the UK, Seattle and San Francisco.
Mrs Allan, who still returns to Scotland every six weeks to groom dogs for long-standing customers, admits that she had never even heard of podencos - the Spanish word for hounds - before moving to Spain.
The breed, brought from the Canary Islands around the 8th and 9th Century, are used to hunt rabbits, deer and wild boar, but thousands face a grim existence and an even worse fate once the hunting season ends.
"They're born to be tied to a wall 24/7, whether it's in 40°C heat or -14°C in the north of Spain," said Mrs Allan. "They're fed scraps because the mentality is if the dog's starving it'll hunt better. "They stuff 20 dogs in a trailer. The lucky ones are the ones that get lost and picked up, but this season a lot of them got smashed by cars because they hang around petrol stations looking for food.
"At the end of the hunting season they hang them. It's barbaric."
In some cases, hunters will hang podencos from low tree branches so that their hind legs barely touch the ground, forcing the animals to 'dance' back and forth until they die in a cruel practice dubbed "playing the piano".
Others are shot, drowned, burned, poisoned or offloaded into dog pounds where they face being put down with excruciating injections of bleach. The lucky ones are driven to remote locations and dumped, but in one horrific case an abandoned podenco reportedly had its eyes gouged out so that it could not find its way back.
While bullfighting is widely known and often criticised outside of Spain, most foreigners are unaware of the plight of podencos. Increasingly their treatment is being condemned within Spain, with protest marches in Seville, Malaga, Madrid and Barcelona in February this year.
Campaigners argue that authorities turn a blind eye to the cruelty because hunting is valuable to Spain's struggling economy.
"You've got all sorts of corruption with the councils and the mayors because it's important for the tourism economy," said Mrs Allan. "Hunting is a big thing in Spain - it's like hiring a ghillie to go fishing. They sell ammunition, clothing for hunting, trailers. You can book to go hunting here."
One of the podencos rescued by the Allans, Celeste, was found with neck wounds from a failed hanging. She has since been rehomed in Hazelbank near Lanark.
Another nine have been rehomed so far this year.
"It's not a lot, but you have to find the right homes for them," said Mrs Allan. "We've cut the numbers back because you can't spend the time with them - it's heartbreaking.
"Someone said to me it's like emptying a loch with a teaspoon, but if you can save some you have to try."
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