Key takeaways:
- The author says Spanish wildfires are fewer but more severe because fuel—not sparks—sets intensity, and old rural practice used small or even set fires plus local cost–value judgment to keep dry vegetation down.
- Permits, “protected” trees, and impact studies are blamed for emptying the countryside (España vaciada) and blocking clearance; public land is said to have no real economic calculation, so officials chase every small blaze for votes and leave worse fuel loads.
- The proposed fix is less collectivist regulation and more owner-led trial and error—not more rules or firefighting budgets.
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In the old times, wildfires happened a lot more frequently than people assume. After all, there was no electricity. All heating and cooking was done using fires. And wildfires also happened due to natural phenomena such as lightning. So both completely untouched ecosystems and humans in the natural world had to learn to live with wildfires.
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When fires got either too big, or had too much vegetation to burn or were close to valuable parts of land, they would be tackled. This meant people would again make a calculation and deem that the fire would cost more to leave than to extinguish.
These economic calculations would avoid high-intensity fires. These would not happen as not enough fuel would be allowed to accumulate, and valuable parts of land would be kept clean of dry vegetation. Authorities nowadays concentrate on spark avoidance, but it is the fuel that determines what fire you have. A spark can start a fire, but it only becomes a raging inferno if it has enough fuel to burn. Fire prevention does not mean putting up signs saying “barbecues forbidden,” it means clearing the land of excessive dry vegetation.
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As politicians and bureaucrats cannot calculate what wildfires to tackle nor allocate resources rationally, their only incentive is to do whatever gains them more votes and power. As wildfires create a lot of panic, there is much to gain by trying to tackle any little fire. Small beneficial fires are extinguished, accumulating even more fuel for high-intensity fires. When these do happen, there is nothing they can do.
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