Summer arrives, the fires arrive. Spain has become accustomed to the sad reality that July, August and September are more than months of sun and beach. They are also fire, such as the one that hits three songs, Las Médulas, Galicia or Andalusia. Only so far from 2025 the flames have already calcined more than 69,000 hectares, a figure that reopens an old debate: in what conditions do forest firefighters work? Does it make sense that much of them are operational only in summer and do not dedicate themselves to clean the rest of the year?
After all, there are those who think that the fires are out of winter.
A percentage: 40%. Mount is all year old. Forest Firefighters, not so much. Although the situation of the brigades is not the same in all regions and there may even be differences between operators (many do not work directly for the administration, but through subcontracted companies) a quick search arrives in the newspaper library to confirm that one of the great injuries of the collective is temporality. And to show a button, or a few.
In a chronicle published today in The world Javier Matinsa, one of the firefighters who is responsible for fighting the forest fires of Madrid, warns that the staff of the public company that assumes those tasks thinns drastically when autumn arrives. “40% of the staff only work in summer, but the ideal would be for it to do it all year because the prevention work is vital,” he reflects. “They are missing about 40 effects per day and there are more than 30 places to meet.”
Is there more data? Yes. On account drops and partials, but that help better understand the context in which many of the forest firefighters who these days are fighting the fires that expand through the Peninsula work. In another analysis of 2023 on the same subject, The world He slipped that around 25,000 professionals who are responsible for prevention and extinction work in summer is passed to 10,000 in winter. The data starts from union sources, but agrees with others that have been renovating from the collective.
“They make you a contract in July, you work until September or October and then to the street until the following year,” he said in 2022 in RTVE Carlos Martín, a firefighter from Castilla y León. The public chain estimated at that time that two thirds of the region agents worked only during summer campaigns. In general, instability is an extended problem in the forest sector. The state public employment service estimates that 43% of all contracts are temporary.
Why is it important? Because although the fires devastate hectares (and they monopolize headlines) in summer they are not really an exclusive problem of July, August and September. His management and prevention extends to the rest of the year, as he remembered and in 2021 Carlos Moreno, promoter of a petition at Change.org with a title that speaks on its own: “Forest fires go out in winter.”
“Most forest firefighters work three or four months a year, in summer. And the rest of the year? Who cleanses the mountains to prevent fires? Nobody,” says Moreno. His campaign already accumulates more than 206,000 signatures.
“A polvorín ready to burn”. The debate is important because the Spanish mountain has been clearly transforming over the decades, influenced by changes in its use and population movements, especially in emptied Spain. In a recent interview with COPE, Miguel Arroyo, a disseminator on forest issues, warned that although Spain has much of its territory cataloged as Forestry only manages a small portion. “This means that 80% is totally abandoned and is a polvorín ready to burn,” he says before warning that the problem is especially serious on the private mountain.
“The strong depopulation and rural aging, the cessation of traditional agricultural activities, the absence of forest use and serious policies that manage the territory have drastically transformed the territory and contributed to the increase in forest area,” WWF warns. “(That change) does not translate into the increase in healthy, stable and diverse forests. Cultivated and grazing areas in the past are today covered with thickets, young pioneer or rodal forests that, without adequate management, are sentenced to burn sooner or later.”
“It’s a shame”. Temporality is not the only problem denouncing forest firefighters. The photo changes from one autonomous community to another, but in the sector it is cry out for the reinforcement of the templates, the coverage of vacancies or the increase of wages, among other demands. “When you live the things you live, it hurts a lot that we are not recognized,” acknowledges Pablo Antón, one of the tragsa public company that works in the Community of Madrid.
In a recent interview with RTVE, Jesús Molina, president of the Company Committee of the Forest Firefighters in the region, said there are 33 uncovered vacancies and the collective has been freezing with frozen salary, which has even led him to convene a strike. The guild complaints extend to other latitudes of the country, such as the Valencian Community, Castilla-La Mancha or Galicia. The guild now looks with expectation the new law of the sector.
The flames advance. As a backdrop are the fires that over the last days and weeks have been extended by Galicia, Madrid, Castilla y León, Extremadura, Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha or Navarra, leaving several dead and a balance of calcined surface that, so far this year, exceeds 69,000 hectares, which exceeds the average of the last 18 years.
Some time ago Civio published a map that shows that in recent decades that scourge has been felt unequally in the Spanish territory, priming all all with Galicia, part of the Cantabrian and some points of Extremadura.
Images | Ministry for Ecological Transition 1, 2 and 3
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