The pet war: can animals be subjects of rights like humans?

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The Animal Law that was approved on Thursday in Congress has opened a debate on whether pets can be subjects of rights like humans, as intended by the Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra. In their ministry they defend that this norm confers on dogs, cats or hamsters a supposed "legal personality as sentient beings and they are no longer considered things". Jurists, philosophers and anthropologists denounce "moral imposture", "legal fiction" and

the "nonsense" of these statements, while they are branded as "dogmatic", "conservative" and "speciesist" by those who, following the philosopher

Newly awarded

, claim to raise the legal status of animals.

'The

It makes it clear that rights are only predicable with respect to individuals. In accordance with articles 29 and 30, birth determines personality and it is the acquisition of personality that determines the acquisition of the rights and duties inherent in people," explains Professor of Civil Law Luis

.

The Call

It continues the reform of the Civil Code of 2021, which qualified animals as "sentient beings", gave them a different status from "things" and regulated joint custody in divorces of their owners. But, as Gutiérrez Jerez recalls, "animals have continued to be included within the right of property".

"You see the intention of the legislator to want to profile the animal as something more than a thing, but without ceasing to be a thing at all. Even knowing that animals, because of their human proximity and the utility they provide, have characteristics that differ from things, at no time does the Civil Code consider them subjects of rights. And no other law can attribute subjective rights to them because they are not subjects, but objects of rights. That is, they generate obligations to their owners. Which? Treat them with dignity," he says.

"Our duties to them"

It is the same position of philosophers

"Animals have no rights because they have no obligations," and

, which, in his latest book,

(Deusto), addresses the issue. "We do not recognize a right in the animal, but some duties of us with respect to it," he says. "Considering that animals are subjects of rights, that is, conscious beings with ethical and legal responsibilities, is outside biological reality," says the anthropologist.

.

The PSOE senator disagrees

, President of the

of the Senate, which speaks of the existence of "two positions": "That of those who believe, from paternalism, that animals are not holders of rights, but that humans have the duty to promote their welfare due to our moral superiority. And then there is that of those who want to make the leap and defend that animals are subjects of law because they are holders of morally relevant interests, "he says. "For me it is clear that animals have these interests," says this professor of Philosophy of Law, "and the most relevant are not to suffer harm and avoid violence."

At your side is

, President of the

: "The law responds to a paradigm shift. For a long time the subject of law has been man and animals, the object. But there is a deobjectification of the animal and it begins to be perceived as the subject of some rights, such as the right to welfare, to a dignified death ... Contemporary society is the first to be legally interested in the rights of the weak and this is an advance comparable to the struggle for the rights of migrants, children and women."

"It will end up changing"

But what about the Civil Code? "The Civil Code has been reformed many times and will end up contemplating it," he replies. "There is a generational change, all my students are interested in this subject, which legal orthodoxy views with disdain. There is already a

at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. It is a spiritual, philosophical and ideological process of depth that will end up reaching the Law, "foresees this professor of Roman Law.

The

It defines "right" as the "faculty of the human being to legitimately do what leads to the ends of his life", the "faculties and obligations deriving from the state of a person or from his relations with respect to others" or the "set of principles and norms, expressive of an idea of justice and order, which regulate human relations".

Can an animal do all this? "The RAE sometimes offers characterizations that are not correct. And, in the philosophical realm, these definitions would not be considered correct. It is false that to receive rights you have to have obligations: it does not happen in the case of babies or people who do not have complex cognitive abilities, "he argues.

, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

Savater replies that "human beings have rights as soon as we grant them to each other, from birth to death, no matter how much Alzheimer's there is, because that is what Alzheimer's is.

, which is the recognition of the human by the human." Zumbiehl, for his part, speaks of "solidarity in the human race": "The whole notion of law emanates from conscience, from a solidarity that makes us called to protect our fellow human beings."

"That animals have no obligations is said by people who know nothing about animals. It is a dogmatic, disastrous and absurd strategy. A chimpanzee has to take care of his family, separate fights, warn when there is food. He has his rules to abide by and he knows he gets punished when he doesn't," he says.

, director of the

, which cites the case of chimpanzees who delayed their group's dinner because they were distracted watching a sunset. Consequently, they were punished and it showed: the next day, they were the first to go to dinner.

Rights for all animals?

The

They speak of an "interspecies solidarity" that "is only conceivable in this way among humans" and ask animalists where they set the limits: are mosquitoes aware? Should we recognize rights for all animals, including sponges? Horta answers: "What is relevant for the recognition of rights should be exclusively sentience. Sponges cannot suffer, as with other organisms such as bacteria, plants or fungi. If, on the other hand, one day, as is discussed with increasing attention, there were artificial intelligences that were sentient, they should also be recognized rights."

The extension of this debate to what is told in

it serves De Lucas to mark his red line in "those who are aware of suffering", which "neuroscience says are vertebrates, although scientific experiments have shown that octopuses also suffer". He recognizes that all this would ultimately lead us to prohibit eating meat or stop experimenting scientifically on animals so as not to cause pain to some.

of rights. "These are conflicts of interest," he says, which "show that this is not only a legal debate, but a political or civilizational one."

Luri points out that "this is a debate only imaginable among men." "When someone claims that animals have rights, he is recognizing the clearest anthropomorphism, because man is the only being capable of limiting his possibilities of action out of respect for another being and of seeing his limits as a problem, so all this only highlights the uniqueness of our species." "It is an apology," he emphasizes, "for the capacity of the human being."