The Moorish skewers, chistorra, and chorizos, remnants of a frustrated barbecue, rest on the table next to a bottle of oil twisted by the heat. Only two tents have escaped the fire at the Iruelas valley campsite (Ávila), where two semi-burnt towels hanging illustrate the miracle. Everything else is devastated. It smells of burnt plastic, the many bungalows have practically melted, a motorcycle is now a metallic mass, and only the skeleton remains of the trampoline. This is how plot after plot has been affected by the scourge of the Burgohondo fire, devastating in the south of Ávila. The forests have burned, and with them the surroundings of many homes and businesses, to the despair of families like the Gómez, hoteliers who own the campsite, aware that the flames have scorched their economy. They are already sensing it, even though they remain busy: there aren’t enough hands against the fire.
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Karen Gómez’s tattoos, at 28 years old, point the way. “Resilience.” “Courage and heart.” The fine black ink stains her skin just as ash does in the forests where so many like her grew up and enjoyed themselves. Now the trees are smoking totems. “It’s always the same lack of control,” she complains on Saturday morning, 72 hours after the first sparks, stating that there were no resources. Then, despite the useful nearby reservoir, the crucial helicopters were missing.
Hell broke out on Thursday. Evacuations, fear, escapes. Erick, 30, explains with eyes red from lack of sleep and working amidst the smoke that a group of residents and visitors from La Rinconada, a village between the grove and the reservoir, got trapped. He had to put six people into a boat, including two civil guards who went to assess the situation, and take them out by water, where horses were submerging themselves to get away from the front. He didn’t care that some time ago he lost a finger and part of the muscles in his arm in an accident in that same boat.
“It’s surreal that someone from Madrid who has never set foot in the countryside makes rural laws,” he criticizes, grateful to the forest brigades where he worked for several years and critical of the Military Emergency Unit (UME), which he accuses of inaction. The patriarch, Jesús, 56, drinks coffee with evident cuts on his arms from the night’s struggle. “The Civil Guard wanted to arrest us for cutting down some trees to prevent the fire from reaching the restaurant,” he complains, in front of the business where he works, now empty. “Put the handcuffs on me!” he replied. It wasn’t necessary.
The three show videos of the other brother, Nick, 23, extinguishing fires all night with volunteer crews near Val de San Martín, another critical point. None of the four have slept, yet they set off towards the homes in Rinconada, many scorched, one of them directly collapsed by the fire, with shattered windows. The young men get into a pick-up, carrying a chainsaw alongside their friend José María Guerrero, 47, a resident there and tense throughout these days. “Are you going to cut it with that knife?” he jokes, finally slightly relaxed after so many hours of drama. Yes, indeed. Erick uses his forestry knowledge and cuts the one-meter diameter, 20-meter long trunk that has fallen across the path leading to another town. Together, we push the wood to remove it. The three remain there.
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The father is without a vehicle and asks journalists to take him to El Barraco, also a victim of the flames these days, where his partner runs a hostel. Along the way, amidst more smoke and sudden flares and a man guiding two horses, one of which has sores on a leg, the man tells his story with fire.
-This is my third fire.
-The worst, right?
-No. The first one ruined my life. I had a painting company in Madrid, and everything burned down. The insurance didn’t cover anything. Then I opened a restaurant, and that also burned down.
At least now his partner’s business and the bar where he works have resisted. They call him asking about different properties, and he tells his interlocutor that his land has been saved. “What joy you’ve given me. I love you very much, Jesús,” is heard on the other end of the phone. The meeting with his wife, María José Hernández, takes place at the El Encuentro hostel, where a team of firefighters from Segovia is also sleeping. The woman breaks down: “It’s being too hard, a horror.” Hernández boasts about her family, with children and nephews committed to their Ávila, fighting against the perceived absence of institutional support, without the backing they need. “Everything was burning, and there was no one!” she recalls about the cursed Wednesday when, according to her memories, it took hours for resources to appear. The woman from Ávila predicts that the fire, which has devastated “a paradise,” will jeopardize multiple families who live off the landscape, its peace, its rest: “People have to come. Otherwise, how do we live?”
The conversation proceeds with a certain calm until a new column of black smoke is spotted through the windows. Rushing out leads to a residential area near the reservoir, with scattered houses, almost within the forest and surrounded by scrubland: a tremendous threat. Residents deploy and collaborate with firefighters from various origins enlisted in the battle against the fire. Hoses are laid, fire beaters are shaken, shouts are made against the smoke, and joy is exclaimed when it finally rains: it is the water falling from the helicopters, manna amidst the drought of smiles.
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