For the third consecutive year, Elvino Gasparotti and Irmgard Haub have gone to Villanueva de la Vera to check the course of the fiesta  of the Pero Palo:

This year is characterized from an intense activity of information: we have sent appeals to 200 associations in Europe, and so, have arrived therefore numerous protests.

Also during the Italian television program Forum”, Rita dalla Chiesa has exhorted the televiewers to undersign on the site a petition for the respect of the normative regional of the Extremadura.

Already the transport is irregular

Arrived to Villanueva de the Vera there we immediately are put in contact with Ivan Salvia, president of the Spanish association “El Refugio del Burrito”, that has informed us to want to effect with our help, a control on the truck used by the Commune to transport the donkey.

From an investigation effected by Ivan, through the office of the Spanish civil Motorization, the van resulted not to be fit to the transport in base to the Spanish law and the normative European.

The day of the Fiesta , Ivan has tried to stop the transport of the donkey also asking the intervention of the Police but after a discussion with Jacinto (the employee of the Commune of Villanueva de la Vera that is dealt with the fiesta), and despite the evidence of the facts, the Police simply has, perhaps for matters of public order, invited our associations to introduce report to the authority competent, but only after the carrying out of the Fiesta.

The donkey has been changed

This year, the donkey was “new”, in how much the donkey used in the mistakes 3 years was by now adult and therefore able to rebel with strength and hardly manageable.

The donkey has immediately appeared nervous. This time, probably because of the strong protests, the personnel employed to control has looked for, to the beginning of the fiesta, to  create a space before the donkey.

After few minutes we have succeeded in filming a brutal scene of a guy of the place that throw with big strength a slap on the face of the donkey, perhaps guilty not to want to collaborate to the fiesta;  the slap was so strong that the head of the poor donkey was folded up on the opposite side.

The run was the same of every year, through the impervious little streets of the town with, perhaps because of the beautiful day of sun, a big crowd of people. Choirs, howl, cackles, sirens, bells and shots, accompanied the whole fiesta, as always.

More times the donkey is fallen and, for the stress, he leastly refused to get up himself, producing more than few worries from the organizers that saw their varied fiesta you  want interrupted.

We have been recognized as “I thrusted in” and in different occasions they have tried to darken the camera “inviting us” not to film and constantly caring under control.

We signal that there have been at least two attempts to make to climb a tall person on the donkey over the jockey; the police was practically absent.

In comparison to the trails editions, the jockey has begun the sober run, but with to spend some time, thanks to the repeated drinks, sobriety has disappeared, shown by its strong swaying in rump to the donkey.

During the falls, it has not been possible to film from near as it happened to the donkey because they created a cord that prevented the “extraneous” to verify what happened, above all when they tried to put again him standing.

After a hour and half the procession is loose and the donkey has been brought back to the van. Ivan Salvia and I, as we had decided, we are brought near the command of the Guardia Civil (Police) there and we have introduced in the name of report for the irregular van the two associations. According to the Spanish law, the illegitimate one is extinguishable with a fine that goes from an  Euro minimum of 3.000  thin to a maximum of 16.000 Euro.

The next day, on the local chronicle, an article has been published that brought both the Mayor's declaration and, replying to the protests, he affirmed that the donkey was not abused (you see scene of the slap in the present video…), both the news that the animalist associations had introduced the report.

By the way of the local daily paper, in virtue of the great protest come from Italy, a Spanish journalist had published the preceding week to the fiesta an article in which was asked how come Italians were interested in this fiesta of theirs despite in Italy there were well other problems as for instance the unloading of clandestine to Lampedusa!

Gives the poverty of thought of the journalist, we have preferred not to reply.

We will try in the next months to have a contact with some alderman of the Region of the Extremadura, showing through our contribution video, that the law, laboriously gotten in the 2002 graces to the job of the Spanish animalists, every year has disregarded.

Nevertheless also this year Ivan Salvia has confirmed as the foreign presence and the storm of protests has  gotten the effect to make to understand to the local authorities that really the party is under the reflectors of Europe: let's not forget not never that when Clara Genero started to make to know in Italy this party, the witticism that the party ended was in force when “it ended” the donkey.