[Animals] The PP fails in its attempt in Congress to recover the wolf hunt

[FNX Magokiler]

Livestock and the environment work as a perfect cocktail to unleash in the Congress of Deputies one of those cultural battles that are stirred by the smell of elections. It happened in the past elections in Castilla y León on behalf of the macro-farms and this Tuesday, with the Andalusian appointment already looming, it reappeared in the parliamentary arena, now with the special protection granted to the wolf as a reason. For the fifth time so far this legislature, the PP took the matter to Parliament, this time in the form of a bill for the "conservation of the wolf", whose fundamental purpose in practice was to repeal the prohibition of hunting it approved by the Government last September. As in all previous attempts, the PP ran into the refusal of the left. In return, it led to one of those ideological clashes in which Vox's unleashed verb always stands out and, with it, the inevitable brawl.

It was the wolf, but it was much more than the wolf. The right tried again to fix the idea that the Government is committed to a "demonization of livestock", in the words of the po[CENSORED]r deputy Milagros Marcos, when not directly to "destroy Spain", according to the always more risqué diagnosis of a member of Vox, Ángel López Maraver in this case. This is where part of the debate ended up, in which the statements made months ago by the Minister of Consumption, Alberto Garzón, against the macro-farms, which gave so much play to the right in the Castilla y León campaign, emerged again.

Marcos, in his defense of the initiative, argued that autonomous communities and rural organizations reject the new wolf protection regulations. He pointed out that in the last year there have been 14,000 attacks on cattle, "40 a day," and that the po[CENSORED]tion of the species "has increased by 142 herds in 10 years," a figure that was allowed to be linked to the disappearance of 80,000 farms. ranchers. His account was dramatic at times. “Cattle ranchers cry helplessly and live with their hearts in their mouths,” he assured. The po[CENSORED]r deputy, from Palencia, referred to her own experience: "The other day I went for a run and I found ten wolves." And she concluded: "Who should we protect more, the wolf or the people?"

No one put more effort into refuting the PP than Juantxo López de Uralde, the former Greenpeace activist who now acts as the green spokesperson for United We Can. When only eight months have elapsed since the ban on hunting wolves, López de Uralde argued, it is “absolutely impossible that the effects” described by the PP deputy have occurred.

 

 

The environmentalist deputy maintained that the po[CENSORED]tion of wolves in Spain is stagnant and minimized the damage they cause to livestock by ensuring that the victims of their attacks do not add up to more than 0.004% of the total number of cattle. For these cases, he insisted, the Administration has created a compensation line to which around 1.5 million euros were allocated last year.

The PP's arguments found an echo in deputies from communities with a strong livestock presence. One of the most furious critics of the Government, Isidro Martínez Oblanca, from Foro Asturias, placed the ban on wolf hunting among the "great misdeeds" of Pedro Sánchez. But also a regular ally of the Executive, the Cantabrian regionalist José María Mazón, supported the PP proposal with unusual vehemence: “Since September in Cantabria there have been 506 attacks with 690 dead cattle. It is one thing to protect the wolf and another to allow them to reach their villages, enter their farms and kill their cattle”. The PNV did not support the PP proposal because it considered that it imposed a regulation on the autonomous communities, although its deputy Joseba Agirretxea agreed that measures are necessary to further protect ranchers.

Insults from the extreme right
The debate was being intense, without reaching provocations or personal attacks, until Vox appeared. If United We Can had staged its most accredited environmentalist, the extreme right brought out Ángel López Maraver, former president of the Spanish Hunting Federation. His first words wanted to be lyrical: "This morning, at dawn, in those first lights that wake up the wren and the archentor, while many of your lordships from this social-communist government were still wrinkling the sheets, the wolf has killed again". After the lira, the sword: López Maraver called the Vice President of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, “Teresita Rojo” and the members of United We Can “carpet ecolojetas”.

The government bench reacted indignantly. “Haven't you been educated? Haven't they told you that you shouldn't be insulted?” Socialist Omar Anguita stirred. “We cannot normalize the insult,” López de Uralde protested, asking the Table for protection. This is how they usually end what they call cultural battles.

 

https://elpais.com/clima-y-medio-ambiente/2022-05-24/el-pp-fracasa-en-su-intento-en-el-congreso-de-recuperar-la-caza-del-lobo.html