The terrible fires that have burned some 400,000 hectares (about 1,550 square miles) are now extinguished thanks to some sterling work by the firefighters, with help from other regions and even other European countries. Bravo! Fierce rain also made a welcome but slightly late arrival in the north over the weekend.
Bringing the danger home to my corner of Spain, our nearby municipality of Lubrín (Almería) lit up the sky on Thursday last week as 400 hectares burned in a scrub fire.
We saw those large yellow water-planes repeatedly flying over us to load in the Garrucha harbour. All very scary.
Fire-prevention is the key lesson to be learned. In other times, the country-folk would clean out the mountains (if nothing else, at least for firewood). Goat-herders and hunters would be present, helping in their different ways.
Now everyone has moved to the cities: better jobs, more nightlife and a Corte Inglés for that shopping thrill. A quote from a more substantial organ than my humble newsletter: ‘…the exodus of farmworkers to cities in recent decades "has created vast areas of flammable scrub on abandoned land"’.
The PP leader Feijóo feels that the answer to the fires in Spain lies in putting ankle-bracelets on every person that would feature on a proposed list of registered arsonists. The more likely cause, global warming, is still a step too far for conservatives (a bit like the school shootings in America: it’s pretty damn obviously the availability of guns and not the video games). From El Mundo, we read that a proposed deal by Sánchez to form a united front against national disasters has flown too close to the sun: ‘The PSOE and the PP dismiss the possibility of a State Pact on climate change to prevent wildfires. Sánchez's party accuses the Partido Popular of "institutional disloyalty," while Feijóo's party criticizes the government for using the "wild card" of climate change to "evade responsibility"’.
How anything and everything in Spain is political; and Feijóo’s only driving interest is to somehow make it to the top before he is defenestrated by those bunching up behind him (Ayuso, Moreno, maybe Mañueco and others).
The larger fires occurred in three regions – all controlled by the PP. These were Castilla y León, Galicia and Extremadura. Apparently, during the winter season, none of their agents managed to participate in the Government’s working group to define the inventory of firefighting resources, nor did they attend any of the eight meetings with Civil Protection last year, where the number of available resources must be detailed for coordination of their use in emergencies’. The idea was – let the central government handle it, until the first fire roared into life.
So now, as the political season returns, the usual angry (and largely pointless) fighting will return to the Spanish parliament.
In the hope that the building’s fire extinguishers have been checked.