Warning: Animal Lovers Stop Reading Now.

We arrived at the Benalmadena fair and began looking around the various festive tents, stalls and rides. It was a lot like a fair you would get in England except maybe a little more upper class. A little. One of the rides that intrigued me the most was 'The Bounty', a pirate ship ride, not unlike the pirate ship rides we have over here but with a unique difference. Instead of strapping people into seats with a big iron bar they piled them all into metal cages and made them hang on for dear life.

I did wonder for a moment whether there were racist connotations here, naming the ship 'The Bounty' and putting everybody into cages seemed a little too familiar for comfort. I stopped wondering about the pirate ship when I noticed the carousel though.

Your ordinary run of the mill carousel, flashing lights, music, happy children going round and round with big smiles on their faces. It was pretty ordinary apart from one pretty major thing.

The plastic/metal horses, 100% fake horses, you would find on a normal carousel had been taken out. Instead 8 Shetland ponies had their faces attached to metal poles and were dragged round and round. Nobody seemed phased by it, nobody but us, the four English people sticking out like a sore thumb.

It was awful. We passed again half an hour later, they were still going around. I wondered if they got to take a break, but I imagine they didn't.

I love the Spanish and I love their culture, but I might just stay away from their fairs in future, if I wanted to see racism and cruelty to animals I would watch The Simple Life.