SOME might say it serves them right for moving to the country.

cockerelBut a British couple in Alhaurin el Grande have been forced to call in police after being kept awake by a neighbour’s cockerel for months on end.

Living in a pen just 30 feet from their home, the pesky rooster often starts crowing at 3am and sometimes doesn’t stop for hours at a time.

Even worse, the couple from London, who work in IT, are often tormented by the raucous rooster during the day.

“We have zero quality of life at the moment and are confined to keeping the doors and windows closed,” revealed the British woman, who asked not to be named for legal reasons.

“We have stressful jobs working remotely for UK companies and are getting little sleep.

“We are now looking to sell up and move back to the UK because we cannot handle this anymore. We are simply at our wits end.”

The couple are particularly upset that their neighbours, a French couple, are apparently ‘blackmailing’ them to move the rooster further away from their house, near Lauro Golf.

“They are asking for €800 to build a new pen for it at the other end of their property. It seems like blackmail to me.”

She continued: “They actually think it’s funny and can’t understand why we have a problem, saying it was ‘our choice’ to live in the countryside.”

Funnily enough it was this view both the local police and town hall took when they attempted to take their complaint further.

Local police were unwilling to intervene and with conflicting information coming from the Guardia Civil, the couple have been left with a bureaucratic nightmare.

The law is fraught and conflicting since owners are responsible for disturbances created by their pets and open countryside is not excluded from a 2003 noise pollution law.

However, the environmental department of Alhaurin Town Hall was less sympathetic. “The countryside is for animals, not people,” an employee told the Olive Press.

Please email [email protected] if you have had any similar problems.


  1. Sadly, I no sympathy with these people, move into the country and you have to expect noises of animals, machinery etc. So if you moved near a railway, would you be surprised to be kept awake by trains? Sorry, but think this is just another excuse for an ex pat to go back home

  2. What do people really expect living in the campo, you expect birds, dogs, horses, donkeys and everything else that goes with it, like machinery being used at dawn, fires when your washing is out but that is the price you pay for the pleasure of campo it is not really any different than rural UK and the farming community there. It is a shame that some people seem to impose a town attitude because it does not fit in with their lifestyle. The Spanish were here first, be it right or wrong as expats we have to get over it or return to where we came. Not everyone is suited to country life as for some the idea of not hearing all the noise that comes with campo living brings would be beyond them.

  3. I live in the countryside and I am used to all the general animal and machinery noises, it takes time to adjust. When I worked in London I noticed the drone of traffic consistently in the background, you never seem to be far away from a large road, maybe I should have complained and had the traffic stopped but I never thought about that. They should put really loud music on to drown the cockerel out.

  4. I live in the countryside on Lauro. All throughout the night you have dogs barking next door and in the valley. Early hours you get the donkey and cockerels. Then about 6-7am you get the golf course machinery starting up everyday, earlier on a weekend. And it doesn’t bother me because I choose to live in the campo, therefore you get campo noises like dogs and cockerels and donkeys. If you don’t like campo noises, simply don’t live there and don’t complain. No sypthany at all.
