Each summer, Spain faces the same tragedy again: forests reduced to ash, homes destroyed, and thousands of professionals heroically battling increasingly intense fires that are harder and harder to control. After every catastrophe, new investments in firefighting resources are announced—more planes, more helicopters, and more equipment. All of this is essential. But reality shows that, on its own, it is not enough. The real fight against wildfires doesn’t begin when the first water bomber takes off. It begins much earlier, throughout the year, with proper land management.
There is one point that must be made clear. Climate change worsens the problem, but it does not fully explain the scale of these major disasters. The real factor—one we can act on—is the abandonment of the countryside and the lack of active forest management. For decades, we have allowed large forest areas to accumulate massive amounts of biomass, turning them into an enormous reservoir of fuel. The disappearance of traditional activities such as grazing, forest use, and mountain farming has contributed to that buildup, increasing the risk of fires of enormous intensity.
This reality is sometimes compounded by excessive administrative complexity. Protecting the environment is an unavoidable goal, but preserving our forests cannot mean preventing their management. When preventive actions are blocked by long, rigid procedures, the result may be exactly the opposite of what we intend to avoid.
Protecting a forest doesn’t mean leaving it to chance. It means clearing it, maintaining it, removing dead trees, reducing scrub, preserving forest roads, and supporting the traditional activities that for centuries helped sustain the balance of our Mediterranean ecosystems. Prevention also requires making use of all the opportunities offered by technology. Thermal cameras, artificial intelligence, drones, and early-detection systems make it possible to locate a fire while it can still be rapidly contained—with far lower costs than a large-scale suppression operation.
Equally important is integrating into land-use planning the infrastructures that can act as barriers against fire. Golf courses, reservoirs, irrigated agricultural areas, and major peri-urban parks can play a strategic role thanks to their watered surfaces, water reserves, and excellent access for emergency services.
Spain has excellent forestry professionals, outstanding firefighters, and one of the best firefighting response systems in the world. What it needs now is to complement that effort with a genuine national prevention policy—based on active forest management, simplifying administrative procedures for preventive actions, strengthening the forest economy, and intensively using new technologies.
Every euro invested in prevention avoids enormous economic, social, and environmental costs later. Wildfires will continue to be part of life in Mediterranean countries. The great tragedies, however, are not inevitable. The best policy against fire is not only about putting out fires. Above all, it is about preventing them from happening in the first place.
Because wildfires don’t go out. They’re prevented.
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