On 28th July 2022, the city of Palma de Mallorca, the capital of the Balearic Islands, approved a proposal for replacing horse-driven carriages with electric carriages. A change to electric carriages has been called for several years by the animal protection party, Progreso en Verde, which has consistently denounced the town hall administration for its inaction in bringing about this change. Finally, the council voted in favour of the change, with the abstentions of members of the right-wing parties Partido Popular and Vox.
In addition to this resolution, another amendment was approved that will come into force with its publication this August, and by which it will be prohibited for the horse-drawn carriage operators to take their horses out to do work if there is a yellow, orange or red weather alert for heat.
At the end of July, some images that quickly went viral on the internet showed what had happened just a few days before in a square in the Majorcan capital, where a horse that was pulling a carriage collapsed and fell to the ground.
Many cities no longer issue licences for horse-drawn tourist carriages, and many, including Barcelona, New Delhi, Oxford, Tel Aviv, and Melbourne, have already banned them altogether. Other cities, such as New York, Prague, and Charleston, are also advancing towards the phasing out of this activity.
In other popular destinations on the island of Mallorca, such as L’Alcúdia and Sant Llorenç des Cardassar, dozens of exhausted horses are still forced to pull carriages laden with tourists through the busy streets. And now with the effects of global heating when the temperatures may surpass the regular temperature in summer of 35 degrees Celsius, this is becoming even crueller. PETA has a petition to the mayors of these municipalities to ban this outdated form of transport.
