More than 400,000 hectares have burned in Spain—primarily in Galicia, Castilla y León, and Extremadura—in the worst summer on record. This is well above the 306,000 hectares that burned in 2022. The burned area accounts for 0.8% of the country’s surface area and 40% of the surface area burned in Europe.
And although the situation has improved significantly, there are still 15 active fires that will continue to add to the terrible toll, which so far includes four deaths, dozens of injuries, and thousands of people evacuated, with an economic cost that is still difficult to calculate.
As expected, this has sparked a political controversy with accusations flying between the regional leaders of the affected autonomous communities—who reproach the government for its slowness in providing resources to the firefighting teams—and Pedro Sánchez’s government, which, a week after the disaster began, suspended his vacation to visit some of the affected areas and offer a major State pact to fight against climate change. An offer that the PP has called a “smokescreen.”
Neither the autonomous communities nor the Government in Madrid wanted to declare a Level 3 emergency, which would have led to the Ministry of the Interior taking control. The communities argued that this would not have meant an increase in the provision of resources. And the government believed that the fight against the fires was being handled correctly.
Despite this, and the multiple causes that experts point to as an explanation for the disaster—laws that prevent intervention in forests and woodlands, the abandonment of rural areas, the biggest heatwave on record, a drop in prevention investment…—the political dispute has only just begun.
The PP has forced the urgent appearance of four ministers in the Senate, while Pedro Sánchez and the government insist on calling for a “major State pact” and will declare the affected areas “catastrophe zones” tomorrow, although the advantages of such a declaration remain to be seen given the results of similar declarations in recent disaster cases, namely the volcano on the island of Hierro, in the Canary Islands, or the southern area of Valencia after the DANA disaster.
