Monday, 16 April 2012 00:00

The greatness of a nation can be judged by how it treats its animals

Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilies

(Leave it to Juan Carlos, nothing more) started hunting in 1962, in the giant estates of a friend in Portugal: The Estate of Palma, estate of 200,000 hectares, where he enjoyed killing partridges, foxes and jabalíes.

Then followed Safarilandia (Mozambique, Africa), a giant game reserve the size of Euskadi, owned by Werner von Alvensleben German baron, who came to the cream of European society. Greek billionaire Stavros Niarchos, the then French President Valery Giscard and the then Prince Juan Carlos were among the guests of honor. A photograph of those days shows John Carlos, rifle in hand and smiling, with his first trophy: Three Cape buffalo heads and horns of unantílope saber, a greater kudu and other species of ungulate. On each side, two natives claim 2 elephant tusks.

In the so-called golden age of hunting in Africa, Juan Carlos chasing lions, leopards and elephant in the Portuguese colonies. Between 1965 and 1975, hunt in Mozambique was expensive, like today, but the prince that he did not care. Overall, it paid the state. Also hunted there the bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin, father of singer Miguel Bose, also bullfighting. Africa was a haven for some of the most visible faces of Franco and the Spanish right inside.

Angola continued, although there was fighting a war of independence. For the Angolan desert teemed with antelope, buffalo and cats. The Bourbon won his coveted trophy: A beautiful leopard. The unfortunate feline fell to the ground, bloodied and tumbling. He died almost instantly. The prince approached the animal, placed on a rock and posed with the corpse still warm. As John Carlos, were also hunting the President of Banco Santander, Emilio Botin, and his wife, Paloma OShea. Eden of the hunt that ended with the decolonization of Africa. In 1975, the Carnation Revolution ended the Portuguese dictatorship and escaped African colonies of Portugal.

The leftist guerrillas of the Mozambique Liberation Front and the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola did not permit or a hunter in their countries. But hunger and civil wars that followed decolonization, almost exterminated the large animal wildlife, reducing by 95% in Mozambique. The case of the buffalo was the more heartbreaking.

The temporary disappearance of the African game reserves, however, did not end the king's devotion to the chase: Participated in October 2004, in a hunt in Romania that killed a wolf gunned down nine brown bears, including a bear pregnant, the newspaper Romania Libera. The Zarzuela Palace (seat of the Spanish monarchy) did not deny the accusation, despite the uproar in the press armed Romanian and Spanish. Not content with that, the same year, according to British newspaper The Guardian, the king was allowed on payment of 7 000 euros, to kill a European bison (in serious danger of extinction) in the Polish Bialowieza forest.

In 2006, the Russian official Sergei Starostin, the nature conservation area of ​​the Vologda region (Moscow), accused him of killing a tame bear peaceful, called Mitrofan, which previously would have drunk a mixture of vodka and honey . After that, they let the poor ursid and "His Royal Highness King Juan Carlos killed Mitrofan with one shot. That same year, King returned to Africa and killed the poor elephant, more recently, the buffalo.

We know the fans and open defense of the King of bullfighting. Not surprisingly, then, that the insensitivity, the thirst for emotions bloody parasitism and unscrupulous people are a constant in the case.

Source: Facebook.com