Fires continue to rage in Spain, overwhelming authorities

Wildfires continued to rage across Spain on Wednesday, leaving thousands of hectares burned. After surrounding and controlling several blazes, the main focus was in the northwest of the country, specifically in the triangle formed by Ourense, León, and Zamora. Of the 10 main active fires identified by the Ministry of the Interior as of Wednesday afternoon, seven were in that area. Over 9,500 people in more than 50 municipalities in Castile and León had been forced to flee their homes due to the threat of the fire, which has now claimed three lives in Madrid and León and left several more injured, four in critical condition. In Extremadura, fire threatened the residents of Cabezabellosa (Cáceres), who refused to leave their homes, to the dismay of the regional authorities. “We are helpless and waiting,” complained the mayor of Alija del Infantado (León, population 573), José María Sánchez Córdoba, a member of the main opposition conservative Popular Party (PP), in the face of the threat of the fire spreading to a nearby pine forest and reaching the town.

The multiplication of fires across Castile and León has made controlling them extremely difficult. This is especially true given the deadly cocktail of high temperatures, wind, and dry thunderstorms. According to the regional government of Castile and León, 1,500 people are working on the extinguishing efforts, including professional firefighters, personnel hired by the regional authorities, the Military Emergency Unit (UME), and government-affiliated resources. On Wednesday night, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska assured that there are sufficient resources to combat the fires and announced that the EU will provide Spain with two tanker aircraft, each with a capacity of more than 5,500 liters.

Furthermore, other regions such as Cantabria were assisting in efforts to extinguish fires like the one raging in the Montaña Palentina region. The regional government, led by Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, ruled out handing over management of the fire to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s administration, which declared a state of pre-emergency on Tuesday. He defended his Environment Minister Juan Carlos Suárez-Quiñones, who was questioned for having attended a lunch in Gijón on Sunday and subsequently justified himself by saying: “I have a bad habit of eating.”

The political back-and-forth over vacation time continued Wednesday. “There’s no catastrophe that caught them working,” insisted Minister of Transport Óscar Puente, accusing Mañueco of being caught off guard by the fire while in Cádiz. Popular Party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo demanded his resignation for “trivializing the pain of others.” But hidden beneath the political noise is the concern of evacuated residents, who don’t know what they’ll find upon their return home, and local mayors of all political persuasions.

“It was horrible, like a horror movie,” sobbed Beatriz Madrid, evacuated from her home in the town of Abejera (Zamora). “Until yesterday afternoon, no one had come. No firefighters, no police, no one. That’s why everyone stayed. In Quintana and Congosto, they arrived when the flames were already in our houses. I had to take detours along back roads to get out,” said a resident of Destriana (León) who was also evacuated.

On the SER radio network, the PP mayor of Alija del Infantado stated that they had not received resources “for protecting the town and extinguishing the fire” and complained about having to rely on “tractors and local fire engines and hoses.” At the same time, Alfonso Fernández, the Socialist mayor of Carucedo, who was affected by the fire that charred the Las Médulas protected natural area, stated that he wanted to know the regional government’s plan for those towns, which feel they have been “abandoned.”

The discontent, however, extends further down the line, to the front lines of the firefighting. “Manuel” was the code word used by forest firefighters in Castilla y León to denounce their precarious situation after the Sierra de la Culebra fires of 2022. Today, it is gaining strength again. The fire had spent three years dormant only to rise again with fury in a region that remains poorly suited to fighting such blazes: Several professionals complained of the heat wave, compounded by a lack of extinguishing resources, appalling operating conditions, and poor prevention and environmental care combined with rural depopulation. Firefighters are once again working tirelessly, going up to 17 hours without food, drinking from garden hoses because they aren’t receiving enough water, or even having to work in their free time.

One of them, who asks not to be identified, picks up the phone minutes before joining the firefighting effort. “Yesterday we worked 17 hours, and the clock shows I slept three and three-quarter hours. Today I think we’ll be at it for more than 12 hours, easily,” says the firefighter, accustomed to long shifts amid smoke, embers, and six-meter-high flames. The monthly salary amounts to €1,300 (around $1,520) if he adds overtime and danger and nighttime bonuses, given the regional government’s tendency to extend their workdays ad infinitum. And not always with food provided: “The other day, during the Las Médulas fire, we went without eating from 1 p.m. until 4 a.m. And then because the residents gave us sandwiches…” comments another colleague.

The lack of water means that more than once they have had to resort to hoses from the orchards where they operate to drink and drench their heads. Like highway robbers, they sometimes gobble up watermelons or grapes to moisten their throats. On busy days, they lose up to five kilos (11 pounds) in weight. The UGT trade union came out Wednesday to endorse the firefighters’ discontent by denouncing the “critical and complex” situation of the firefighting operation in Castilla y León due to a lack of operatives and the “terrible conditions” faced by its personnel. “We have turned our backs on the countryside, the mountains, the villages,” warned the head of the Forest Firefighters, Javier García. “The premier [Fernández Mañueco] and the councilor [Suárez-Quiñones] don’t have to explain where they ate, but rather why forest firefighters aren’t being given the corresponding [employment] category and why the missing operational positions aren’t being filled,” he emphasized.

These firefighters don’t have professional recognition: the collective bargaining agreement defines them as forestry laborers. Not forest firefighters, as that would mean improving their pay and conditions. Causing even more anger was the news that councilor Juan Carlos Suárez-Quiñones was attending a party and lunch in Gijón while the fires were raging.

The two firefighters interviewed come from Villardeciervos (Zamora), and from their base, they saw the gray cloud of the fire that started in Puercas and raged until it engulfed Abejera. They arrived at 6 p.m. on Tuesday to act swiftly, but their commander kept them idling until 10 p.m., when he sent them home. However, they dressed in their official uniforms anyway and went to the front lines. The result: they saved Sarracín de Aliste from ending up like Abejera, devastated and with six people seriously injured. “It makes you furious! They said they were going to send a machine to finish [the fire] off, but they didn’t send anything. There were UME trucks parked, people who hadn’t even seen fires in a cigarette lighter,” they complain. Another issue: coordination with the military or reinforcements from the Ministry of Ecological Transition, those from city councils, provincial councils, or other regions.

These “incomprehensible” decisions outrage the group, just as they infuriate colleagues in other provinces who are on strike despite the west of the country being in flames. The following are comments taken from WhatsApp groups where, incredulously, the union seeks answers and takes issue with the regional government. Expressions include “Uncoordinated positions”; “Sometimes we have a fire plan, a [forest] ranger arrives and derails it”; “The regional government is completely incompetent”; “I understand they’re overwhelmed, but the management is terrible”; “It’s a fucking disaster”; “If this doesn’t result in resignations... nothing will happen with these shameless people”; “Operational collapse, frustration and helplessness, mistakes repeated”; “Total disconnection between the urban and rural worlds, political indifference at all levels.” In addition, promises of sleeping in a hotel and ending up in a sports hall.

This feeling of lack of control remains just that, a “feeling,” for Alfonso Fernández Mañueco. He hammered home the point at midnight on Monday in Zamora. The PP regional premier highlights the investment in prevention, but without estimating the forest hectares in his domain: the approximately €125 million per year represents about €20 per forest hectare, almost half that of Galicia and far from the €88 per hectare in Andalusia, all regions controlled by the PP.

Mañueco states that 1,500 people are involved in the firefighting operation, but participants report multiple cases, in addition to those seen by this journalist, where local residents have been key to saving villages, although several have been scorched. “The people in the villages say there are no resources working, that they are putting out the fires,” say firefighters in the area. The mayor of Alija del Infantado stated: “The residents are organizing.” One of the deceased in the fires raging across Spain was a 35-year-old local volunteer involved in extinguishing this fire. Minister for Ecological Transition Sara Aagesen advocated for the “total professionalization” of these tasks. “Castilla y León must continue strengthening its services and resources and invest in prevention. The fire situation is complicated, but we have the opportunity to continue acting, and we must provide additional impetus for prevention and improve coordination efforts,” she stated in an interview with Cadena Ser.

The director general of Forest Management for the regional government of Castile and León, José Ángel Arranz, responds to the criticism: “When you’re in a hospital and you ask the person carrying your stretcher how the operation went, they may not be fully aware of what happened.” The senior official attributes the difficulties to the “200 fires” of recent days, 10 of them serious and in “critical areas” like Las Médulas. “Resources are always limited, in Spain or Europe, and we have to prioritize, as in everything. In these situations, everything gets complicated, and when making decisions, we have to choose. If we didn’t have 200 fires, it would be easier, but we prioritize avoiding people getting hurt or accidents in the villages,” argues Arranz. Regarding supplies, he claims that they usually arrive without issue, except in complex locations: “Nobody lacks anything, except for the odd anecdote.”

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