Once the very serious fire that affected the Sierra Oeste, with more than 27,000 hectares affected, was controlled, the truce of the public forest firefighters of the Community of Madrid ended, who have resumed protests and mobilizations and have returned to the indefinite strike they have maintained for more than three years. This Friday, about a hundred firefighters gathered in front of the Royal House of the Post Office, the seat of the regional government, to denounce their situation and demand a negotiation from the Administration that allows ending the strike. They ask for the recognition of their professional category ―they are hired as drivers or building maintenance technicians against what the national law, approved in 2024, dictates―, “decent” working conditions, and contracts all year round. In response, the regional government has demanded “responsibility, loyalty, and commitment” from those exercising the right to strike and demonstrate “in an essential service such as the prevention and extinction of forest fires during a high-risk campaign.” The minimum services set are 80%.
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Under the slogan Against the mistreatment and coercion of Public Forest Firefighters and armed with fire beaters with which they have struck the pavement of Puerta del Sol, the demonstrators have denounced the “institutional mistreatment” that, they claim, they suffer from the regional government. During the gathering, the demonstrators chanted slogans such as “forest firefighters, labor rights” and against the Minister of Environment, Agriculture and Interior, Carlos Novillo, such as “Novillo, resignation” or “Novillo traitor, work as a laborer” ―the minister always reminds that he started as a forest firefighter―, in addition to demanding the defense of the forest fire prevention and extinction device with slogans like “Infoma is not for sale, Infoma is defended.”
The strike committee representative, Alfonso Ferrero, explained that the group is gathering again because they have been in a labor conflict for more than 800 days without negotiating with the regional Administration. “Some proposals were given to us months ago, but they are unacceptable and unfeasible,” he said in statements to the media, in which he criticized that the Community proposed for 2027 a gross supplement of 132 euros, equivalent, according to him, to 2% for concepts such as toxicity, danger, physical effort, or morbidity.
The union representative also accused the regional government of failing to comply with the bases of the selection processes, which, he said, included permanent positions throughout the year. He added possible breaches in occupational risk prevention, “with expired personal protective equipment and old material.” “We use respiratory protection masks that have been expired for three years and direct fire intervention suits that we do not know if they are still fireproof, because they are more than 10 years old and we have requested traceability reports and they do not give them to us,” says the strike committee. The demonstrators tried to deliver a letter addressed to the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, to ask for a “real negotiation.”
“We have been on strike for more than three years and still have no solution,” lamented Ferrero. The committee estimates the duration of the indefinite strike at more than 1,200 days and maintains that the ministry has not met with them for more than 816 days. Ferrero also warned of the lack of personnel during the fire campaign. According to their data, there are 124 budgeted positions, but only 60 active workers. “They are not hired through the pool, nor through SEPE [State Public Employment Service], nor people who were left out in the selection processes. 40% of the staff fell and we are not enough to cover the whole summer,” he assured.
In his opinion, this lack of staff forces requesting external reinforcements for fires of a certain size while there are Madrid forest firefighters who cannot join the service. The group demands to work during the 12 months of the year to be able to carry out prevention and forest maintenance tasks during the winter. Fires are extinguished in winter, experts in prevention always remind. The firefighters also denounce that their contracts do not have the category of forest firefighter, but of “paid taxi and van drivers” or “building maintainers.” According to the committee, this misclassification hinders the recognition of occupational diseases and salary supplements linked to danger and other conditions specific to their work.
The entire left has supported them. “Forest firefighters are our first line of defense against fires and climate change,” said the spokesperson for Más Madrid in the regional Assembly, Manuela Bergerot, who attended the gathering to show her support. Bergerot defended that it is an essential public service that needs salary, labor, and professional recognition in line with that responsibility and emphasized the importance of maintaining activity during the winter. Bergerot asked Ayuso to “correspond salary-wise” to the workers and increase investment aimed at caring for natural heritage, forests, and woods.
On behalf of the PSOE, the PSOE deputy in the Assembly Javier Guardiola accused Ayuso and Novillo of “ignoring” for years workers who demand decent conditions: “Every year we have a hotter summer and more dramatic fires. The solution is not to applaud the workers, but to offer them decent contracts, recognize them professionally, and improve the resources they have.” The general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, also participated in the protest, defending the “essential” nature of the work of these professionals. “Fires in Spain are increasingly dangerous as a consequence of the climate emergency, but also of the absolute lack of prevention,” said Belarra, who accused the administrations of “abandoning” public services.
In response to the protest, a spokesperson for Novillo’s ministry said that “the Community of Madrid respects the right to strike and demonstration of all workers,” but immediately followed with a reproach: it demanded “responsibility, loyalty, and commitment from those who exercise it in an essential service such as the prevention and extinction of forest fires, because in the middle of a high-risk campaign, the absolute priority must be the safety of citizens, municipalities, natural spaces, and the intervening personnel themselves.”
The regional government “does not accept that alarm is generated by mixing different professional categories” nor that “the idea of a generalized conflict is conveyed to public opinion when it affects a very small group,” which it estimates at barely 1% of the total Infoma workers. “The Ministry of Agriculture, Environment and Interior has held numerous negotiations with this group. Offers have been made that economically equalize and improve their conditions compared to the State forest firefighters (BRIF), with progressive increases up to 15%, but so far they have been rejected,” the same source assures.
The regional government assures that it “will continue dialoguing” and asks for “the suspension of the strike out of responsibility and respect for the public service.” Regarding the demand to become career civil servants, the Community recalls that “access to public office is governed by the constitutional principles of equality, merit, capacity, and publicity.” The automatic or massive integration of fixed-discontinuous or temporary labor personnel into the civil servant staff “is not a discretionary decision, but a procedure regulated by the basic public employment regulations.”
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