War between PSOE and PP mayors over the fire in Las Hurdes: "I see political overtones in this fire for the elections"
Political storm after the level 2 danger level of the fire in Las Hurdes and Sierra de Gata was deactivated, which has devastated 12,000 hectares since last Wednesday night. At least at the municipal level because neither Guillermo Fernández Vara (PSOE candidate for re-election) nor María Guardiola (PP candidate), the two main candidates to preside over the Junta de Extremadura, have entered, at least for the moment, in this cross of accusations between mayors of their respective parties of this region of Cáceres, although all say they echo what their neighbors think.
Suspicions begin at the time when the biggest fire broke out so far this year in Spain. Is a fire of this magnitude normal, even if it was caused, according to the authorities, in mid-May with temperatures that did not exceed 25 degrees?
“I see political overtones in this fire for the elections so close,” says the mayor of Pinofranqueado (PSOE), José Luis Azabal, a professional forest firefighter on leave. And he suspects that it will have electoral consequences: “My councilors tell me that we are going to lose the elections because in this type of situation, mistakes are always made in the management and the neighbors blame the mayor, in this case for the power outages” , regrets, although he does not hesitate to warn: “This is a red zone.”
In the previous elections, the Socialists got nine councilors, two the PP and one Ciudadanos. Coincidence or not, the fact is that he remembers that the fire started just 300 meters from the area where they were precisely holding a campaign rally, specifically in the Mesegal farmhouse. It was the first focus of the two that existed. Of course, they did not see anything suspicious or identify anyone.
Heavy machinery fighting against the fire, this weekend, in Sierra de Gata.
45 kilometers by road (approximately five between mountains in a straight line), is the region of Sierra de Gata, where the fire reached almost 30 hours later, crossing the existing firebreak in the mountain area. There the main towns are governed by the PP. The mayor of Descargamaría is José María García Ventanas (PP), who focuses, together with the councilor of Cadalso de Gata, Ignacio Rodríguez (PP), on the management of the fire in the first hours, decisive for its spread. Together with Robledillo de Gata, all the residents of these three towns were evicted: “There were no helicopters or seaplanes or bulldozers or anything,” says García Ventanas. “They left us sold at the mercy of the fire, forgotten,” he stresses.
In addition, he remembers how he himself accompanied a brigade from Salamanca in the direction of the firewall, “but they were alone, without the help of air resources”. Precisely, neither that firebreak nor the roads built to prevent the spread in the previous months “have been useless, it is not cleaned, the pines are gasoline, because they have later been abandoned, they have not been cared for, and there is a lot of vegetation, a real bomb”. For this mayor, the management “has been a shame because if they had acted before the Árrago valley would not have burned.”
Iñaqui, the other mayor, describes: “Everyone here realized that there was a serious danger if the Chorro de los Ángeles passed by and there was a chance to stop it because in the first hours of the fire, the wind did not blow, that came later, and We warned them but they didn't listen to us, they didn't do anything in this area and then it was unstoppable, they left us completely sold out and abandoned, and then it was too late, they must have arrived the first day”. In his opinion, “at 10:00 in the morning on Friday it was evident that the flames were coming to the valley, and then there was no wind, and action could have been taken, but nothing was done, everyone was in Las Hurdes.”
The mayors of the PP consider that their criticisms do not belong to the political sphere nor do they have an electoral profile “but adjusted to the evidence, to the facts, with concrete data, and the neighbors saw it, hence their impotence”, denounces the mayor of Cadalso. At the same time, they complain that all the media that came from other communities (Madrid, Andalusia, Castilla y León and Castilla La Mancha) and even from Portugal, in addition to the UME, were initially concentrated in the Pinofranqueado area and not in Sierra de Gata. “It could have prevented the left bank of the Árrago from being razed”, they agree.
State of one of the pine areas in the Las Hurdes area, after the fire.
However, the socialist mayor of Pinofranquedado, the most affected by the fire (some 7,000 hectares of the total 12,000 burned, most of them pine trees), attributes the spread of the flames “to the strong wind” and considers that the deployment of media “has been the biggest ever seen, more than the other big fire we suffered 20 years ago”. And he emphasizes: “It is that everything has been unexpected and we have always gone after him.”
For Paco Castañares, former director general of the Environment and experts in forest fires, “a wrong reading of the fire has been made because the first night it was thought that it was not going to be important and they had all morning to stop it, because there was no wind , but it was not done”. And he offers data: “The humidity in the first hours exceeded 70% and was not very intense, and action should have been taken in those first 20-30 hectares that began to burn, but they trusted that it would be paid for and they ended up paying because in less than 24 hours the humidity dropped below 20%,” explains. “Since the area is not cleaned or worked on beforehand during the year, 60 tons of fuel had been prepared to burn but the director of extinction never thought it would be so important, although the behavior of the firefighters is commendable, who have all my appreciation”, adds
According to his assessment, “the forest burns because it is poorly managed, even though they always try to focus on the terrorist arsonists, but they find all the elements in their favor to act, because politicians always have the need to find someone to blame for release their responsibility, a trick used by public administrations, which are responsible for managing forest fuel”. In addition, he warns that last week in the region of Cáceres there were not temperatures as high as in summer: “With more than 40 degrees the misfortune would have been much greater, it would have multiplied by five, although unfortunately they will not learn and fires as serious as this They will continue to happen,” he predicts.