“It is because the villages are abandoned that the fire has advanced so quickly”

The spine bent on the remains of their vegetable patch, ravaged by the flames in the village of Pénilla de Valderia (Province of Léon), Angelita Garcia, 77 and her husband, José Adonsa, 86, cry on the landscape of desolation that surrounds them. In addition, In front of them, burned fields. Furthermore, Behind, a forest of which only left -handed trunks of oaks, pines and ash trees remain. Similarly, “It was such a beautiful valley. Similarly, with its rivers, its irrigation canals, its fields and its mountains”, Softly sob Angelita Garcia, this Tuesday, August 19, a mask on the face to protect himself from the dense smoke from Porto de Sanabria fire, about fifty kilometers to the west, active since August 14. In addition, Unless it covers that of Yeres-Las Medulas. to the north, which has ravaged, since “it because villages abandoned fire August 9, a natural landscape classified at UNESCO.

More than 390. 000 hectares of vegetation have left smoke in Spain since the start of the year, according to estimates by the European Observatory Copernicus, including 350,000 since August 7. A record. while twenty large fires remain active despite the end of an intense heat wave of sixteen days, with temperatures of almost 40 ° C in the north of the country. Eleven megafeous of more than 10,000 hectares have been identified. The province of Léon. in the northwest of Spain, is the one that suffered the most, with that of Orennse, in Galicia, which records nearly 70,000 hectares burned in fifteen days. “From the bus in which we were evacuated on Monday. August 11, we saw languages ​​of fire coming from all along the mountains, recalls Angelita Garcia. These are the people who refused to leave. stayed “it because villages abandoned fire in the valley to fight against the flames that saved the village. »»

To find these anonymous heroes. simply follow the road to the Eria valley, where everywhere the same landscape of blackened trunks, burned cars and black fields extends as far as the eye can see. The same smell of burnt too. transported by a thick smoke that bothers breathing and envelops a red sun in the middle of an apocalyptic sky.

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