I can't change the output of PaginatorHelper::next and PaginatorHelper::prev to return as <span>. So, I wrote code to replace <div> with <span>.
https://trac.cakephp.org/ticket/3991
<?php //Pagination if($paginator->hasPage(null, 2))// Don't display pagination if there is no second page. { //« $sPrev = $paginator->prev('«'.__('Previous', true), null, null, array('class'=>'disabled')); $sPrev = str_replace('<div class="disabled">', '<span class="disabled">',$sPrev); $sPrev = str_replace('</div>', '</span>',$sPrev); echo $sPrev; echo ' '; echo $paginator->numbers(); echo ' '; //» $sNext = $paginator->next(__('Next', true).'»', null, null, array('class'=>'disabled')); $sNext = str_replace('<div class="disabled">', '<span class="disabled">',$sNext); $sNext = str_replace('</div>', '</span>',$sNext); echo $sNext; } ?>