Spanish
The city of Málaga, one of the most touristic in Spain, no longer has tourist transport of travelers in horse-drawn carriages since this Monday, after the city council revoked the 25 licenses that were still in force and compensated the owners.
The measure is determined by "the incompatibility of the activity of the horse-drawn carriage service with the development of the city in conditions of safety and health, both for users of the public road and for the animals themselves", argued the city council.
The removal of the permits was announced last January by the mayor, the conservative Francisco de la Torre, during a municipal debate.
The amount of compensation paid to the injured parties amounts to 125,380.48 euros per holder (147,000 dollars), as established by a report prepared last February by an external auditor.
The revoked licenses had a maximum validity of 20 years, until the year 2035.
The city council also removed today the vertical signage indicating the reservation of parking spaces for horse-drawn carriages in several places in the center of the city, capital of the famous Costa del Sol, which is frequented by hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists.
The Animalist Party Pacma celebrated the end of the tourist carriage service in Malaga "after more than ten years of struggle" to end it, and encouraged other cities to "follow the same path".
The horse-drawn carriage ride to admire the monuments and urban natural landscapes is one of the tourist attractions of several towns in the Andalusia region (south), especially in the city of Seville, where they are famous.
