BARCELONA: Spanish firefighter Javier Garcia has never faced anything like the record blaze raging near Madrid in his two decades protecting woodlands and rural communities.
“This doesn't have a precedent,” Garcia told The Associated Press by phone before another long day ahead.
The out-of-control fire has consumed 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) — an area five times the size of Barcelona — and forced 25,000 people to flee villages in the smoldering hills of Avila west of Madrid, the capital.
The ferocity of Spain's largest recorded wildfire is forcing firefighters to fundamentally change their tactics, prioritising evacuations and property protection due to the danger posed by fast-moving walls of flames and blazes too powerful to attack directly.
“The evolution is alarming,” Garcia said.
Before, his brigade would tackle fires in the wilderness. Now they are a last line of defence, focused on saving lives. No deaths from these fires have been reported, while 79,000 people have fled their homes from the Avila fire, another fire nearby in the Madrid region and one in eastern Castellon.
“That gives us more work and more stress,” Garcia said. “Now it is lives first, then homes, and after, the forest."
Garcia works with one of Spain's emergency wildfire brigades, which deploy to help regional firefighters when they need help. They spend 12-hour shifts hosing down burning trees and hacking away at underbrush before it becomes fuel for the flames.
His 40-man unit, based in Avila, has been working for three days on the Avila fire. Before that, they fought fires in Guadalajara and near Zaragoza in recent weeks. The Guadalajara fire consumed 320 square kilometers (123 square miles), making it Spain's third largest on record.
“Until last year, I had never experienced fighting one big fire after another,” the 43-year-old Garcia said.
Large areas of Spain have always been fire-prone thanks to its hot summers and relatively dry climate. But experts and government officials say that climate change has increased the frequency of heat waves and periods of drought, extending periods of high risk for wildfires.
Once one ignites, it grows at a speed and voracity rarely seen before.
Garcia said there used to be around 15 days of extreme fire risk each year. Now firefighters are on alert for 30 to 40 days.
Fires have burned 1,530 square kilometers (590 square miles) this year in Spain — six times the area scorched by blazes in the first half of 2025, Sara Aagesen, the ecology minister, has said.
Meanwhile, a monster fire in neighbouring France has forced over 200,000 people to flee their homes.
Raul Guerrero, 29, has worked as a firefighter in Castilla y Leon, the region including Avila, for the past decade. He said this fire can't compare with any he has battled.
He told the AP that his 40-man unit has had to retreat to safer ground on several occasions when the danger of being trapped was imminent.
He said the fire at several moments was “beyond the capacity of extinction,” which, he said, means “the fire is so virulent and has such power that no matter what you do, you can't put it out.”
Asked how that makes him feel, Guerrero said “above all, impotent.”
Raul Guerrero, 29, has worked as a firefighter in Castilla y Leon, the region including Avila, for the past decade. He said this fire can't compare with any he has battled.
He told the AP that his 40-man unit has had to retreat to safer ground on several occasions when the danger of being trapped was imminent.
He said the fire at several moments was “beyond the capacity of extinction,” which, he said, means “the fire is so virulent and has such power that no matter what you do, you can't put it out.”
Asked how that makes him feel, Guerrero said “above all, impotent.”