A donkey ride from the rank on Plaza Virgen de la Peña costs €15. A cart pulled by a donkey, carrying two people, is €20. A horse-drawn carriage is €25. Those are the figures the Mijas town hall's own tourism page publishes, alongside daily hours of 09:00 to 18:00 in winter and 10:00 to 21:00 in summer.
The part the tourism page does not carry is that this is a contested trade. Since 2024 the rank has drawn organised protests, a formal complaint to the Guardia Civil, a criminal arrest after an operator assaulted a tourist, and a municipal bylaw restricting when the animals may work in heat. As of the council's last recorded meeting with welfare groups in December 2025, it was all still unresolved and the donkeys were still working.
What it costs and when it runs
| Price | |
|---|---|
| Donkey ride | €15 |
| Donkey cart, two people | €20 |
| Horse-drawn carriage | €25 |
| Winter hours, daily | 09:00–18:00 |
| Summer hours, daily | 10:00–21:00 |
The rank is on Plaza Virgen de la Peña in Mijas Pueblo, which is also the main arrival point for the village, so you will walk past it whether or not you are looking for it. The council built a dedicated parking area for the animals on Avenida Plaza Virgen de la Peña, sized for 60 donkey taxis and eight carriages.
One honest gap: the official page prints the price and not the ride length. The last figure to reach the national press was 15 minutes for €15, reported in 2019, and nothing since has confirmed it, so treat the duration as unpublished rather than agreed.
The size of the fleet moves with the source and the year – 69 animals in 2019, more than 60 in 2022, 61 in 2023, around 60 through 2025. Around 60 is the fair current number, and no one publishes an audited figure.
The heat rule, and what came before it
In August 2024 the town hall issued a bando restricting the service in hot weather, later updated: under a yellow AEMET heat warning, the service does not run between 14:00 and 18:00. Under an orange or red warning, it does not run at all that day – the municipal text is explicit that no hour is exempt.
Note what the trigger is: an AEMET warning, not a temperature. On a hot day with no warning in force, the service runs its full published hours, and an ordinary Costa del Sol August day is hot without being flagged – the August weather guide has what that actually looks like.
The rule exists because of what preceded it. PACMA's September 2024 complaint set out the working day as 08:30 to 21:30 – roughly thirteen hours – and the campaign that began the year argued the animals work 365 days a year. The heat bando took the afternoon out of that on yellow-warning days and the whole day on orange or red, and left the rest of it intact.
If you see animals working in a heat warning
Why there are protests at the rank
The dispute has a clear timeline, and it is worth having it straight rather than as a vague sense that "some people object".
- May 2024: PACMA held its "Cut their rope" protest at the Mirador Hermanos Núñez, calling on the town hall to end the service outright.
- August 2024: a video of a donkey collapsing circulated widely. A protest followed on 21–22 August, put at between 60 and 80 people depending on the report, organised by campaigner Anne Blitz, calling for tuk-tuks in place of the animals and council-funded sanctuaries. Donkey owners and some residents mounted a counter-protest with horse-drawn carriages the same day.
- August 2024: an operator was arrested after assaulting a British tourist who questioned the animals working during an orange heat warning.
- September 2024: PACMA filed a formal complaint with the Guardia Civil against both the council and the muleteers, alleging chronic welfare breaches – the 08:30 to 21:30 working day, short tying ropes, poor stabling and visible injuries – and demanding licences be suspended.
- September 2024: PETA offered the mayor an electric tuk-tuk in exchange for ending the trade.
- December 2025: the council met FAADA, Donkey Dreamland, Todos los Caballos del Mundo and El Refugio del Burrito to discuss the welfare of the roughly 60 animals. The service continued.
None of that has closed the rank, and none of it has been withdrawn either. A "Burro-Parque" in a disused quarry has been floated as a future home for the animals, but as of 2025 it was a plan rather than a place.
Donkey Dreamland is not part of the taxi trade
This needs saying plainly, because the names sit next to each other in search results and the relationship between them is the opposite of what people assume.
Donkey Dreamland is a rescue sanctuary and a critic of the taxi service, not a branch of it. Founded by Amaya Isert, it took in and rehabilitated eight donkeys from the Mijas burro-taxi service during 2025, six of them following reports to SEPRONA, the Guardia Civil's environmental unit. It is funded by paid visits and donations, with no municipal support, and it was one of the four organisations at the council's December 2025 welfare meeting.
The visitor site is at Diseminado la Rosa 79, near La Cala de Mijas, about 20 minutes' drive from the pueblo – down on the coast rather than up in the village. In 2026 the charity expanded onto a new 14-hectare permanent sanctuary at Benarrabá, near Casares, with the La Cala site continuing as a visitor centre and halfway house.
Should you take the ride?
We are not going to pretend this is a neutral choice, and we are not going to make it for you either.
What is documented: the animals work a long published day, a bylaw was needed to stop them working through the hottest hours of a heat warning, a national welfare party has a live complaint in with the Guardia Civil, and a sanctuary 20 minutes away has spent the last year taking donkeys out of this specific trade.
What is also true: this is a licensed, regulated municipal service with published tariffs, the operators are local families who have worked the rank for generations, and the welfare allegations remain allegations rather than findings.
If you want the photograph, you can take it from the square without hiring anything. If you want to be near donkeys and would rather your money went somewhere uncontested, the sanctuary down on the coast is the honest version of that. And if you ride, ride early in the day rather than in the afternoon heat.
The rest of the village – the viewpoints, the oval bullring, the lanes above the square – is covered in the things to do in Mijas guide, and if you are heading down to the coast afterwards, the Mijas beaches guide covers the strip the sanctuary sits behind.
FAQ – Mijas donkey taxis
Images: eloyotero / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
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