Reacción a "An attribution study links climate change to the intensity of extreme fires in Spain and Portugal in August 2025"

The study was carried out in a very short period of time and with limited information and methodologies, as acknowledged in the study itself. For example, if the aim is to compare the effect of fires with other countries, it is necessary to have consolidated information on forest area —in terms of the Spanish Forestry Law, wooded forest area—. For now, the only information available is from satellite images, from which the following must be subtracted:

• areas not actually burned

• non-rural land uses (watercourses, reservoirs, infrastructure, urban, logistics and industrial areas)

• agricultural land and

• deforested forest land.

To put this into context, the following table is attached:

In hectares (ha)

It should be noted that in 1970 Spain had 25 million ha of forest land (50%), of which 53% was deforested and 47% (11.8 million ha) was forested (IFN-1). Fifty years later (average field data from 2020), 66% of forest land is wooded (18.4 million ha) and 33% is deforested (IFN-4). When compared with fire figures for the last five years, it can be seen that fires are concentrated in deforested areas, especially in the north-western interior. These areas are also those with a considerably higher number of forest fires in relation to their surface area. According to the latest ten-year report published by MITECO (2006-2015), which divides Spain into four regions for fire purposes (Northwest: Galicia, Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias, León and Zamora; inland Spain, Mediterranean Spain and the Canary Islands), the northwest, which accounts for only 16.1% of Spain as a whole (excluding the Canary Islands), suffers 9.0 fires per 1,000 km2, while the rest of Spain suffers only 1.4, which is a ratio 6.4 times higher. It should be noted that the Basque Country has low fire rates and in summer, which is the most critical time for fires in Spain as a whole, the Cantabrian coast and northern Galicia have hardly any fires.

This high number also shows a culturally ingrained use of fire compared to the rest of Spain, linked to livestock farming.

With regard to claims that the risk of fires has increased up to 40 times or that such fires only had a return period of 500 years until the onset of climate change, whereas now they are much more frequent, it is advisable to be more cautious as many factors are masked. Obviously, climate change brings about changes that increase the risk of large fires, but we also know of huge fires in the past (the Greeks named the Pyrenees after the fires, pyros).

When talking about winds, it should be borne in mind that a fire of a certain size generates its own wind currents that are different from those around it. Closer to the present day, but with significantly lower concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere, we have records of the Ayora fire (Valencia) in 1979, which burned around 30,000 ha, and the two fires in central Catalonia in 1994, which burned more than 40,000 ha at a time when the continuity and biomass load of forests were significantly lower than today.

The fact that Spanish forests have closed rapidly, increasing by 62% in area and 338% in biomass load, means a multiplication of the continuity and load of fuel ready to burn. This is precisely what leads to high-risk fires (6th generation) capable of modifying the atmosphere above them and generating pyrocumulonimbus clouds when they reach that point, meaning that what happens in the surrounding atmosphere is no longer a determining factor. This requires large concentrations of heat from the fire if there is a significant accumulation of fuel ready to burn, determined by fine dead elements characteristic of areas with forests and scrubland, as well as abandoned fields.

Finally, one of the main conclusions of the European research project FIREPARADOX was that, given the exclusively repressive response to fires, focused on extinction, an improvement in the area burned was achieved in the short term, but that, over time, this was diluted as the underlying problem was not addressed: the generalised state of abandonment of the territory in the Mediterranean, the best indicator being the progressive increase in the area burned, increasingly concentrated in large forest fires (GIF: >500 ha).

It includes a passing reference to the floods caused by the DANA on 29 October in Valencia. While it is obvious that climate change increases this risk, there are references to recurrent flooding in the Turia, Júcar and Barranco del Poio basins at intervals of 25-50 years (e.g. Cavanilles). The Sinus ilicitanus reached the gates of Elx in Roman times and has closed within 2,000 years thanks to successive floods in an area with considerably less rainfall than the Gulf of Valencia.

The main messages section indicates that these were the most devastating fires suffered by Spain when, in 1994, 438,000 hectares of forest land and 250,000 hectares of wooded forest land were burned, a figure that, considering the above, is unlikely to be reached, given that autumn is generally a quiet period in this area.

While climate change is undoubtedly a contributing factor to the risk of large fires, focusing solely on a long-term global process that depends on disruptive advances, both in terms of energy generation and its economical and reliable storage, which are unpredictable over time and require complex international consensus, is not responsible for a basic issue of spatial and temporal scale with regard to a specific territory. Even what is identified as a priority, recovering management and adapting territories to make them more resilient, would contribute very positively to the fight against climate change by increasing the supply of extensive livestock products that do not generate greenhouse gas emissions, wood, cork, resin and other key forest products in the substitution of fossil and mineral raw materials with high energy requirements (bioeconomy). Deconcentrating the population of metropolitan areas would not only be advisable for quality of life or culture, but also for the climatic effects it entails.

The trend in public policy has been to favour preventive and resilient approaches over repressive ones, for reasons of efficiency and equity. It is incomprehensible why, when it comes to the rural world, certain actors repeatedly show a clear lack of empathy, which is an important part of the equation and of the principle embodied in the SDGs of leaving no one behind. Faced with a lack of support from society, in a democracy they finally decide to leave and abandon their territory, and one of the consequences of this is large fires.

Large-scale reforestation is also proposed, which is not exactly desirable if discontinuities in vegetation are required so that firefighting teams can act safely and have a real chance of controlling the fire. Furthermore, in most of the wooded areas in both Portugal and north-western Spain, the predominant species were Pinus pinaster, Quercus ilex, Q. pirenaica, Q. robur, Q. petraea and Castanea sativa, characterised by the ability of the former to produce serotine seeds and the latter to regrow.

The main messages make a scientifically refuted reference to the greater propensity of some species to burn compared to others, forgetting that the structure and load of fine dead material is much more decisive in forest fires. The behaviour of fire has nothing to do with the origin of the species, whether introduced or native. They cite Eucalyptus and Acacia, which, although present in the north-west, are not found in the burned area, as it is too continental and cold in winter.