Why are hundreds of chickens roaming the streets of Spain's Torrevieja?

It might sound like the start of a bad joke, but in the town of Torrevieja in eastern Spain chickens are indeed crossing the road. Hundreds of them even.

Although they can be a nuisance, the local council have assured residents that they "do not represent a danger nor are they invading” the town.

Despite their statement, Torrevieja council have been looking at ways of getting rid of them or least reducing their numbers "as a precautionary measure".

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"The birds are temporarily forced to inhabit an environment hostile to them, shared with vehicles and people. As they move and wander through public roads, parks, green areas, and pavements in search of food, they pose a danger to themselves, pedestrians, and vehicles, and can even be run over or cause traffic accidents ," a the local government representative told newspaper El Confidencial.

Back in February of this year, the council put a tender to ask companies to help remove the birds and take them to a safe place. They budgeted a total of €26,000 for this. However the company who won the contract - Ecoplanín Xestión e Información Ambiental SL - bid only €19,600, around €28 per chicken.

An average of two birds per day would only need to be captured to cover the contract, but seven months down the line and very little has been done.

The company has now announced that it is pulling out of their contract as according to Spain's Animal Protection Law, the chickens must be captured alive and taken to sanctuary.

This is something they reportedly can’t do, and so for now the birds are still roaming free.

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Yolanda Morales, national spokesperson for the animal rights party Pacma explained to newspaper El País that the main problem is that: "These animals cannot be profited from," and their stay in the sanctuaries must ensure that they die naturally.

This means the chickens can’t be simply moved onto local farms as they may then be reared for meat or laying eggs. They must find a sanctuary willing to take them on and enable them to live out the rest of their days there.

According to the local newspaper La Información, Torrevieja's chicken population explosion started from a small group that lived on Las Naciones Park roundabout around 2014.

At the time there were only 40 birds that someone had abandoned there, but neighbours began to feed them and they had lots of nearby land to roam about on, so their population grew rapidly.

The brood have now colonised other areas to the southwest of Torrevieja, such as La Estación Park, Islas Canarias Square, an abandoned plot of land in La Veleta, the surroundings of the San Roque neighbourhood and the luxury Villa Amalia residential development.

The council also claim that they hired a company to remove around 500 of these chickens back in 2022, but residents say this never happened.

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Videos and images have appeared on social media showing the flocks running amok all over these areas, causing many complaints about health and safety risks.

Local press has reported that some of the birds have even been seen crossing the N-332 highway, which has caused dangerous traffic situations.

Residents also denounce the fact that the pollos (chickens in Spanish) making their streets dirtier and causing extra noise.

Not everyone is against the presence of Torrevieja's clucking avian residents, however. Some locals enjoy feeding them like they do the pigeons, children like watching them and they have even become popular with some tourists.

Torrevieja is one the municipalities in Spain with the largest foreign population, with non-Spaniards estimated to make up around 52 percent of it's 106,000 residents.