If you have spent time in Spanish towns or cities, you have probably seen them. Small groups of cats living around parks, plazas, alleyways, and empty lots. Usually there is a feeding station, sometimes a small shelter, and almost always a local volunteer quietly looking after them.
The funding for local authorities is focused on managing these feral cat colonies in a humane way, as required under Spain’s Animal Welfare Law. This usually means trap-neuter-return programmes, maintaining colony records, and ensuring basic health monitoring.  Trap-neuter-return is the standard humane approach. Cats are captured, sterilised, and returned to their original colonies instead of being removed or culled. Over time, this stabilises populations, reduces disease, and allows cats to live safely in familiar environments with ongoing care.

A good example of how this looks in practice comes from Alhendín in Granada, where the municipality recently opened a “Cat Hotel.” It is a repurposed recycling container adapted to give colony cats shelter from heat, cold, and rain. It is a small project, but it shows how local authorities can adapt creatively when resources exist. (more…)