To Ferdinand VII: "Depopulation and the dehesas make Extremadura a disastrous threat to fire."

"Your Excellency: The Public Prosecutor of His Majesty says that the particular situation of Extremadura , its depopulation and the many and extensive Dehesas that cover most of its territory, have made the consequences of the lack of caution in burning , which is usually done to fertilize farmland and to improve pastures, more disastrous than in any other Province...”. The statement by the Public Prosecutor at the Royal Court and Chancellery of Valladolid in 1831 already gave an account, almost two centuries ago, of the problem posed by fire in that same 'brown mountain' of Extremadura that has now burned out of control in a fire that originated in La Jarilla, Cáceres .

A report whose purpose was to obtain a circular on fires from the Royal Agreement: “These same reasons have powerfully contributed to the fact that in the municipal ordinances and in the governmental provisions the Justices and Town Councils of the towns have tried to avoid the evils by wisely combining the promotion of agriculture and livestock with the safety of the fields and the populations and achieving that they are free from the horrors, loss of wealth and detriment to public health, that fires cause…”

And three decades earlier, in 1796, another report from the Royal Court recorded the damage and the common practice of setting fire to the brown mountain: “…that on the 25th of this month (August 1796) a loose fire burned a considerable portion of trees in the Dehesas de la Haza and Urdimalas next to the Tiétar River, the former belonging to the Monastery of Yuste and the latter to the Convent and Nuns of the Town of Serradilla. The destruction and damage to the trees is among the greatest and the fire seems to have been born from the malice of some goatherds from Serradilla called Morales…”, as recorded from the Provincial Archive of Cáceres by Professor Cristina Montiel Molina in Historical Presence of Fire in the Territory (Ministry of Agriculture, 2013).

Pyrotoponymic names

It's no coincidence that Jarilla itself is actually a town whose name comes from nothing less than what has been called a "pyrotoponym," places that are part of a fire landscape and were named for their association with flames ; Jarilla de jara, the scrubland that burns in the fires. The same is true of nearby Rozas, Brezal, and Escobar, in that long line of the Central System formed by flames, burnt stumps, and columns of smoke and ash that have been repeated for centuries.

Names that, according to Montiel, indicate the practice and use of fire in these lands and that define their characteristics: “in accordance with landscape associations with elements of vegetation and land uses, (...) river courses or relief forms, as an indicator related to the fire regime in the Central System during the Late Middle Ages .”

And now, the row over their causes and the different theories : whether it's runaway environmentalism and the abandonment of the countryside , those caused by economic interests, climate change , or protectionist forest regulations that paradoxically encourage them to burn. But what do historical studies of forest fires in the Iberian Peninsula tell us? Are rural uses like slash-and-burning beneficial? Has the evolution of the rural environment turned the forest into a danger? What have been the characteristics of fires in recent centuries, and what are their lessons?

Although systematic records only date back to 1968, there is evidence of concern about forest fires in the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula since the Middle Ages , as demonstrated by the Royal Charter of Alfonso X of 1235, which stated that “those who burn the mountains” or “those who run and make fire” and by many other local charters such as that of Santiago of 1252, which, for example, ordered: “that no one sets fire to burn the mountains, and that those who fail to do so, let them throw it in”, as Luis Guitián Rivera writes in Forest Fires Through History, a 1999 study by the University of Andalusia coordinated by Eduardo Araque Jiménez . No translation is needed for the 13th-century Charter of Santiago: the lack of control and potential losses were already exasperating even then.

What was the common denominator of those fires? Surprisingly, they weren't too different from today's fires , although they were different in scope and consequences. Most of them originated from rural uses , such as pasture improvement and land clearing. Two-thirds of today's fires have the same origins, and although a few centuries ago, clearing fires—which were generally permitted—were also rampant, this was to a lesser extent due to the extensive use of fire , which for centuries was part of everyday life in the Spanish countryside.

The rural fire culture actually kept fires under control.

Burns used to clear stubble, open land, or improve pastures are ancient practices. Rather than causing major tragedies , this rural fire culture actually kept fires under control . It's true that during the 16th and 17th centuries, complaints began to arise about the out-of-control nature of some of these wildfires, but as Cristina Montiel explains, most were accidental , the result of agricultural or livestock work, and were "small, low-intensity, and rarely left a mark, because rural communities reacted immediately to put them out."

What happened then, that in this century we mourn great losses due to forest fires and denounce reckless practices, such as those of forest firefighter Raúl Vicente , who in his memoirs In 2009, he said of the Cantabrians, for example, that they betrayed their culture with the match during the massive fires of that summer?

He described it with bitterness in Brother Fire: The Trials, Joys, and Disappointments of a Forest Firefighter (Los Aciertos): “It is estimated that only two-thirds of intentional fires are directly related to pasture regeneration and agricultural burning. The other third is a mixed bag that includes motives as varied as promoting hunting ; scaring off wolves , bears, or other animals; eliminating government-owned forest reforestation projects; or even harming neighbors or society as a whole as revenge in response to the most diverse frustrations. It's as if the arsonist somehow reaches a point of motivation where they can solve anything with a lighter.”

The Forestry Ordinances of 1833 and subsequent laws introduced surveillance, penalties and restrictions to try to prevent fires.

The prevention and regulation of forest fires in Spain truly began during the 19th century, based on investigations and reports such as those at the top of this article in the Extremadura region. Fire in Spanish forests ceased to be viewed as a peasant tool at that time and became a state problem. With the arrival of forestry administration and technical engineers, traditional local management was displaced, imposing conservation regulations that conflicted with local practices.

Thus, according to the geographer and writer Josefina Gómez Mendoza , the Forest Ordinances of 1833 and subsequent laws introduced surveillance, sanctions and restrictions , although their application encountered property conflicts, litigation and resistance from rural communities, accustomed to using the forest according to their immediate needs, as she argues in her book Historical Forest Fires. Socioeconomic Context and Legislative Framework (International University of Andalusia).

Furthermore, the fires, caused mainly by agricultural and livestock practices, but also by social tensions , began to occupy a certain space in the press and in public opinion and the first glimpses of an ecological narrative began when the fires were described as an " environmental disaster ".

It was from the middle of the 20th century that fire went from being a field management tool to a threat.

Despite all this, the 17th and 19th century reports rarely identified an arsonist ; rather, fire was assumed to be an inherent risk of working in the forest. It was from the mid-20th century onward that this relationship changed, according to Cristina Montiel, "and fire went from being a management tool to a threat." Why did a practice that had been used in the countryside for centuries, with some risks but without burning large areas, become rampant from the second half of the 20th century onward?

It is true that this was also the time when fires began to be systematically recorded using scientific criteria with the legislation of 1968: the area burned began to be measured in hectares and not merely with the number of charred trees, the causes were established and preventive measures were intensified, but the two major studies on fire in the Spanish mountains agree in pointing out that it is not so much the greater record as the transformation of the rural world, which acts as the true driver of major disasters: “Fires became more widespread and intensified in the mid-20th century, when fire ceased to be a phenomenon controllable by rural inhabitants for different reasons such as rural exodus which generated a loss of territorial culture and management capacity; changes in land use that entailed a new nature and spatial distribution of fuel; fuel accumulation due to the energy transition towards petroleum derivatives; emergence of new forms of life and urban behavior, etc.,” writes Cristina Montiel in Historical Presence of Fire in the Territory .

And to this we must also add the third of fires caused by various economic interests, as pointed out by forest firefighters who have worked on the ground, like Raúl Vicente. For most citizens accustomed to the urban world, the forest and its management are an absolute enigma , whose history is unknown. Beyond subscribing to political slogans of one persuasion or another, it is necessary to first examine the history of its development to understand anything.

Fire has been a part of the Spanish forest landscape for centuries, as is the case with the "landscapes of fire" of Extremadura and its "hollow forests" of dehesas. It has also begun to pose a risk of catastrophic consequences , as demonstrated this summer. There are, of course, accidents and extreme heat , which makes extinguishing these enormous masses of heat increasingly difficult. There are regulations from the Middle Ages and transformations that seem evident in the last two centuries and that require more than just throwing arsonists into the fire.