Plague Threatens Andalusian Horses

“This is all in ruins,” said Miguel Angel Cardenas, looking sadly round his immaculate stables in the heart of Andalusia, home of the internationally coveted Spanish thoroughbred horse.

An epidemic of African horse plague, which has swept through southern Spain for the third consecutive year, has not only killed hundreds of horses but also threatens the thoroughbred industry and even the breed.

The mosquito-borne disease, which kills horses in a matter of days, has forced a stringent vaccination campaign and a government ban on the movement of horses from the affected area.

It had put the equestrian events for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona in jeopardy until the International Equestrian Federation declared itself satisfied with Spain’s controls.

Cardenas, one of Andalusia’s most renowned breeders, has 160 horses, including foals and mares. His string of grays and chestnuts has won more prizes than any other in the region.

He has lost no horses to the plague, but because of the ban on movement he has scarcely sold an animal in three years.

“I can’t go on like this, selling nothing. Horses have to eat every day. I have lost at least 20 million pesetas ($200,000) in each of the last two years,” he said.

On a whitewashed wall on his farm a small, blue inset tile carries the inscription: “Miguel Angel Cardenas built these stables out of love of the Spanish horse.”

On another wall a similar tile reads: “And God took a handful of the south wind, added his breath and created the horse.”

The objects of Cardenas’ pride and anguish stand quietly in their spotless stables or perform dressage exercises in a covered ring. In a huge, separate yard another 50 horses amble or stand impassively in pleasant winter sunlight.

“The Spanish horse has great nobility and intelligence and is very easy to break in,” said Cardenas. “It does not have the speed of the English thoroughbred but it is the most versatile of all horses.

“If this situation persists, the breed could disappear,” he said.

About 150 breeders own the 2,000 thoroughbred mares and even fewer stallions that are the nucleus of a strain more than 1,000 years old. Even an untrained horse can have a value of $30,000.

African horse plague came to Spain in mid-1987, when Namibian zebras were brought to Madrid’s safari park. The disease quickly spread to the region around the capital.

A vaccination campaign controlled it and the onset of winter killed the mosquitoes around Madrid. But the warmer climate of the south allowed the mosquitoes to survive and the disease to take hold in Andalusia.

Cardenas said tighter controls should have been imposed when the plague first appeared.

“We should have been prepared to sacrifice a nucleus of horses. We should have had immediate, general vaccination and we should have had total immobilization,” he said. “That might have stopped it, but at the time it was thought to be too dictatorial.”

He blamed lack of coordination between politicians and police for allowing some small horse owners--in a region where many livelihoods depend on the horse, donkey or mule--to bypass the rules.

Cardenas was bitterly critical of European legislation that forbids the movement of horses from a plague-infected area until two years after the last death.

“We now have a vaccine which is almost completely effective. A horse which has been vaccinated and quarantined cannot possibly transmit the disease because it has not got it,” he said.

“European legislation is obsolete and absurd. What more could we want than an effective vaccine? Vaccines are recognized in control of human illness. Why can we not move horses which have been vaccinated?”

He said the issue of the Olympics riding events had seriously affected horse breeders. Sweeping controls had been imposed with the short-term aim of securing the Games for Barcelona.