Our History

HISTORY OF ADANA

Early in 1990, two animal lovers, a Spaniard named Federico Velez Bracho Guillen, and a part time British resident, Margaret Snead, met feeding the stray cats on Estepona seafront.
At that time, the situation with stray animals was acute, and the towns only solution was to poison the cats from time to time, and to catch the dogs, keep them three days in horrendous conditions in three sheds, which was the Municipal Pound and, if not claimed, destroy them.

Federico and Margaret felt action must be taken at once, and this is where they contacted Sonia Longman. They gathered a small team of volunteers and obtained permission from the Town Hall authorities to use their stud horse enclosure for makeshift kennels. From that moment, Federico established that, in future all stray animals should be brought to his shelter and never again to the municipal pound.

In july of 1990, the small association was legalized under the name of ADANA
Asociacion por los Derechos de los Animales Abandonados

Federico and Margaret had already begun unofficial fundraising by holding sales in the local veterinary clinic where the young German vet Ana Brune gave enormous support. The kennels built out of scraps, were desperately inadequate and the town authorities agreed to lend a small adjacent piece of land where ADANA volunteers built a greatly improved, though still far from adequate refuge: By August 1997 the authorities ordered ADANA out, and the buildings were all demolished.

A voluntary vet arranged with the Estepona Town Hall to give us the use of an old goat herds refuge in Parque Los Pedregales. Volunteers raced against the clock to shovel all of the goats droppings out of the huge enclosure. Paint the interior and secure the outside pens. On Christmas Eve, the ADANA family moved in there , and have remained until this day.