Overweight Tourists Not Allowed to Ride Animals

In Costa del Sol, a popular tourist destination in the Spanish city of Mijas, tourists weighing more than 80 kilograms will not be allowed to ride donkeys, writes “Agro-Center”.

The Daily Mail writes that the ban will be introduced on January 1, 2020. Besides, the authorities plan to strengthen veterinary control and monitoring of the conditions in which animals are kept.

Authorities have started working on the innovations following complaints by zoo organizations regarding inappropriate living conditions created for the animals. According to their data, in December 2014, a donkey died after a 150 kg tourist sat on it.

Donkey rides, or, as they are called in Spanish – “burrotaxis”, spread in the region in the 1960s when tourists started asking locals who rode donkeys to take a photograph and ride the animals themselves. Gradually, donkeys became an unusual form of transport for tourists and one of the main attractions of the Mijas.