I was looking at my cell phone on Saturday, and it said: ‘Higher temperature is expected tomorrow’. I looked again and it said 40ºC. Forty degrees is higher than my blood temperature. Then it added, lows of 28ºC during the night. Sticky!
Mojácar where I live is said to have an agreeable microclimate. It’s not as hot as much of Spain in the summer, and it never snows here in the winter.
We had one bad fire back in 2009, which burned a couple of thousand hectares between Mojácar and next-door Turre, including my old farmhouse (the house survived but all the trees and garden went, and I had the terrible experience of seeing little birds flying and abruptly turning into puffs of flame).
The fire comes so fast, so fast, that people can get caught and they can die. That day, the police drove by with a megaphone – ‘Get out now!’ We grabbed the dog, and we drove down into the rambla, the dry riverbed.
People don’t forget a bad fire: the fear and doubts will remain long afterwards.
Right now, many thousands of people are experiencing this (and much worse). There are huge fires burning across the north-west of Spain in particular. On Sunday, we read of 120,000 hectares burnt (as against 47,000Ha in all of 2024), particularly in Galicia, Castilla y León, Extremadura and Asturias. Just Galicia alone has already overcome the terrible wave of fires in 2017: by Monday morning, the blaze had already devoured 63,000 hectares there. To combat the flames, the Government has maintained a large deployment of more than 3,400 soldiers and 450 resources, which have been joined, among others, by air resources and BRIF helicopter-borne brigades of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition, with 600 personnel, and more than 5,000 Guardia Civiles and 350 National Police officers. Furthermore, Pedro Sánchez pledged on Sunday to forge a ‘national pact’ to confront the climate crisis during a visit to the wildfire-ravaged region of Galicia.
Spain is now in its third consecutive week of heat alerts, with fires still burning in the northwest and western provinces. Military units remain on the ground to support exhausted fire crews, while France and Italy have dispatched water-dropping aircraft to an air base near Salamanca (Castilla y León) to aid the response. On Monday, we read that ‘Spain accepts help from several European countries to help tackle the nineteen active forest fires ravaging the country. Firefighting reinforcements from Germany, Slovakia and the Netherlands will be added to those already provided by Italy and France’.
Even so, we read of ‘dangerous and uncontrolled fires’, with not enough help, or maybe none at all. A UME (army) captain acknowledges the lack of resources to fight the fires: "We are under terrible pressure", he says.
Fires will eventually die down, as the fire-fighters gain control, or simply as the wind turns, or even when there’s nothing left to burn. But until then, there is devastation, loss of life, loss of animals, homes and businesses. Over the weekend, there were reports of major fires with far too little help as the services were badly stretched, and of villagers being told to wear wet face-masks and to stay in their homes.
We read of global warming, and we worry if things will get even worse next summer. But whether one considers this as probable, or as a story cooked up by doomsayers, various hoaxes (bulos) can be found everywhere, from irresponsible news-outlets to social media. The main ones are: ‘There is an organized criminal network operating behind the fires’ (if intentional, they will come from simple acts of arson).
‘They want to reclassify the burned lands thanks to the reform of the Forestry Law’ (burned areas may not be rezoned as urban for 20 years).
‘Penalties must be increased to stop the fires’ (currently, you can get up to 20 years in prison, but only 9% of firebugs are apprehended).
‘Arsonists are primarily responsible’ (under 10% of fires are wilful).
‘The fires are intentional; climate change has nothing to do with it’ (hot summers dry out the undergrowth).
‘Protected areas burn more than other areas left to nature’ (This depends on where the fire starts, not where it ends up).
One way or another, it will take decades to repair the burnt forests – and perhaps some of the villages and homes and stables will be gone forever.
So, whose job is it to finance the fire-stations, pay for the airplanes and send out the firefighters? The answer (and the politics) is that it falls on the regional governments. ‘It is often pointed out that summer fires are avoided in winter, when clean-up and preparation activities are carried out to hinder the easy spread of fires’. Short of a national emergency.
And thus, we come to the politics.
‘…The outcry comes after Feijóo accused Sánchez of not having activated "vigilance in Spain's forests and mountains" in time before the risk season began. He also blamed him for the fires that began ravaging Andalucía, Castilla and León, Galicia, and Madrid (all PP fiefdoms)’. Público quotes Pablo Fernández (Podemos) who says ‘The PP is only clear about the regional powers to lower taxes for the wealthy, and to privatize public services. In the other areas, it tries to pass the buck, as is the case with forest fire prevention and extinction, which falls under the jurisdiction of the regional governments’. Another source agrees – ‘From extreme denialism to cuts in fire prevention: the political debate on the climate emergency’. One report tells of how a bulldozer was moved 17 kilometres from its fire extinguishing job to become the backdrop to a speech from Feijóo and the regional president for Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, in Palacios del Sil (León). The vecinos were understandably not amused.
Firefighters are often poorly paid, or have temporary jobs, or (as in Madrid) are on strike (they’ve agreed to return to work until the emergency is over)…
And still Spain (and next door Portugal) burns.