Filming in the street is not a crime; feeding pigeons will get you fined

Filming in the street is not a crime, and feeding pigeons is not legal either

A sidewalk argument that plays out in any Spanish city. A woman hands out water and bread to pigeons; a passer-by films her with his phone; she snaps back that filming in a public street is a crime and that she plans to report him. Neither of them is as right as they think they are. What is at stake is not who shouts loudest, but two sets of rules almost nobody knows: the right to film in public spaces and municipal bans on feeding wild animals.

What the law says about filming in public spaces

Anyone can film. The street is, by definition, public, and capturing images there is not a crime in itself. The woman's threat to report him rests on no legal provision. What matters is how the footage is later used: spreading someone's face for mockery or humiliation can indeed have consequences, and at that point the person pressing the record button is no longer a mere bystander.

Feeding pigeons: banned in almost all of Spain

The second mistake is more expensive. Feeding urban wildlife is penalised and fined in the vast majority of Spanish cities, through ordinances targeting pests and health risks. The figure that keeps coming up —more than 40 diseases associated with pigeons, with cryptococcosis and histoplasmosis leading the list— turns the gesture into a public health problem, not an act of kindness.

Some argue the woman was doing the job the city council fails to do. Against that weighs the obvious: what one person feeds, another has to sweep up. And the neighbour who believes he has the right to correct a stranger with a camera in hand solves nothing.

With these rules on the table, the sensible thing would be for both to stay quiet and for the council to do its part. It does not happen. The deadlock lies exactly there, at the point where the ordinance, civic sense and the phone of the day never quite fit together.