(EDITED 20th February 2024)
I will not be renewing the equusasinus.net domain name but all the old pages of this blog will remain available as the website reverts to http://equusasinus.wordress.com when the domain expires (just like the former blog http://brotherlapin.wordpress.com) and the two blogs will be available for me to look back on, as a happy diary of these past 14 years: a fifth of my life blogging about the donkeys!
I decided to keep the blog going but change language to Spanish…. See next post!
The blog also needs to remain visible because the emergency forest fire plan is posted here in Spanish and English, https://equusasinus.net/el-parral-plan-de-urgencias-fuego-forestal/ and that is the main risk that we face here – even in winter now – as the drought means the forest is always at risk of ignition.
Due to the infrequency of my posts in recent times, many of the old regular readers of the blog drifted away, and that’s understandable. It hasn’t seemed worthwhile keeping the blog comments open just for the occasional newcomer to drop in and post something irrelevant or irritating, and swan off again looking for other blogs to blot! Never mind: none of that matters now, as the blog will be closed.
What of the future?
Life with the donkeys continues here and since I am now a Spanish citizen I have ensured my future right to remain here with my donkeys. After Brexit, which was a monstrous disruption, I was always living in fear of some other change being brought in – some new threat to our existence – but now I can be confident that my Spanish ID card and passport give me the right to permanence here. And I can vote in EU elections again this year!
I wish I could be as confident that my four donkeys could enjoy a permanent life here, in the place I have constructed as a home for them, regardless of what happens to me. I am in my early 70s and I may have a few years left, please God, but none of us knows the future and I’ve reached that stage in life when friends I have known for many years begin to pass away, so mortality becomes more obvious. The older donkeys, Matilde and Rubí, have maybe 15 or 20 more years in them, and their foals Morris and Aitana maybe five years more than them. The phrase «donkeys’ years» is there for a reason! They live for a long while and may outlive me by a decade or more…
During the great Covid panic of 2020, I began to think for the first time about the need for a plan: if something happened to me, who would look after my donkeys when I’m gone? The question kept me awake at night. I wrote everything down in an 8-page document «Planning for the future care and welfare of the donkeys at El Parral» and gave copies to my good reliable local friends, my solicitor, and my daughter.
In the end, however, the simple fact is that when I am gone from this place there will be nobody here in El Parral to look after the donkeys. It once again keeps me awake at night. When you have spent all your time over fourteen years caring for a family of animals, and you are aware of their dependence and vulnerability, the last thing you want for them is a complete absence of a plan for their needs. No matter how many pages you write in a plan for their care, it is all useless if nobody implements the plan! My daughter had planned to get an Irish passport after Brexit (we first talked about that as I began my quest for Spanish nationality seven years ago!) but recently I was completely stunned to discover that she dropped any efforts on that plan a long while ago. Under the European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) a British passport is only valid for 90 days in the Schengen Area rules. Even for someone who owns a property in Spain, the rule is you must leave after 90 days.
But my donkeys will outlast me by more than 90 days!
So, if I died tomorrow, my daughter would only have 90 days to stay here and supervise the removal of the donkeys from their home. She could not remain here any longer, and there’s nobody else who would be able to stay here with the donkeys. That is the new problem that keeps me awake at night now, even though I am assured of the permanent right to remain here – as a Spanish citizen – as long as I live. So, I have to solve the problem now and begin to plan the future for my four donkeys, without relying on anyone else to care for them and make decisions on their future welfare.
I will be creating a Facebook page in Spanish to help develop my contacts in the world of Spanish donkey keepers (FB page Burros de España is very useful for contacts) and any long-term followers of this blog are welcome to contact me by email and I’ll provide details of that Facebook page: garethomas(at)gmail.com
The real challenge is to find a solution that keeps the donks mainly together once their time in their home here is finished: it would be virtually impossible to re-home all four together, or find a sanctuary that would take such a big group. One possible plan may be for Morris to be eventually re-homed to a neighbour close by, who has a solitary female donkey that needs a companion. That’s only a slightly tentative idea at present… We shall see how that goes.
My two original donks, Rubí and Matilde are so closely bonded that it would be an act of terrible cruelty to ever separate them: they must stay together. But then what of Aitana? She is like a permanent shadow to her mother Matilde and follows her all day long, so in a way there are three inseparable donks here! Re-homing three together would be a conundrum indeed.
So, I close this blog with a huge question, which I fear will remain unanswered for a long while, as I begin to research donkey sanctuaries and owners, and plan for what happens when the donkeys no longer have their Peasant to look after them, and I finish with the following scenario that may be what the future holds.
One day in the future, Morris may walk up the road from his nearby home, trotting along with his new owner and his companion donkey. He will stop and look through the chainlink fence into El Parral and his head will turn slowly around the empty paddocks where he used to run up and down the slopes with his donkey family. He will look at the stable falling into disrepair. Morris will look urgently for signs of life and see none, and he will let out a loud plaintive bray that echoes back from the sheer granite quarry across the Xarquer valley, but the sound will not be loud enough to carry all the kilometres to some unknown sanctuary where Rubí, Matilde and Aitana then live. And yet his bray will be heard by his loving Peasant – who may have gone to meet his Maker – but whose presence will remain here in the wind in the trees. Together we created something good here, even if nothing in this life lasts forever.
Equus Asinus 