El Mundo in Madrid says that Paco Jiménez is the master of the Maspalomas camels

Skid from El Mundo in Madrid. The Italian-owned newspaper has placed Francisco Jiménez, the cattle rancher from the south of the island of Gran Canaria, as master of the Maspalomas camel business. This is an asset on public land of the Caballerizas de Maspalomas company, owned by the Condal family. It is one of the few activities of the family group, which in the Canary Islands has only been mistreated and never sufficiently recognized, for generating tourism in the south of the island.

However, the camel business now has an issue: the new animal protection regulation prevents it from being a business to ride a camel through the Maspalomas Dunes. That is where the mediator of the Bravo de Laguna family, Francisco Jiménez, comes in, since animal associations such as the Franz Weber Foundation have denounced the recreational exploitation of camels, taking advantage of the recent dissemination of a video in which a calf tried several times and without success. successfully stand up with the load of two men on top, without passengers or breeders understanding that the animal was suffering.

Jiménez assures El Mundo He is "the largest camel businessman on the islands and the only one who dedicates himself to his breeding with professional scale and methods." The employee of the Condal family says that he sees "with desperation and boredom at having to be on the defensive" because "I don't know how many days four of us wake up at four in the morning to take care of a sick camel. But that job "There is no video posted. It seems to me that this is a strictly ideological discussion in which a lot of knowledge is lacking."

Jiménez begins by explaining that camel farming has already changed a lot and has adapted to the moral and environmental demands of the contemporary world. "The camels of 40 years ago were used to carrying much more weight than they carry today. The same thing has happened with horses, which previously could ride a hundred or so kilometers in a day. That, today, is imaginable." And regarding the environment, Jiménez says that his tourist operation operates in Maspalomas, in the south of Gran Canaria and that it has scrupulously adapted to the conservation standards of the Dunes, a fragile space protected by law.