I'm from Spain and even though we generally despise them and also refer to them as "rats with wings", I don't believe I would say I hate them.

I mean, they can be annoying. But if I see someone feeding a group of pigeons the last thing I'm going to think about is how annoying those pigeons can be. I feel like the article describes the hatred for pigeons as something almost anthropologically interesting because of it's magnitude and lack of actual sense, and I certainly only consider them a little annoyance.

However I don't live in a big city so maybe it has to do with that.