August wildfires: 100 under investigation and a conspiracy theory

Simultaneous fires in western Spain: 100 under investigation and an uncomfortable theory

More than a hundred people arrested or investigated for starting fires in various parts of the Iberian Peninsula. That is the figure supporting the thesis that what peine last August was not just another bad fire season, but a coordinated operation. The pattern described in testimonies is always the same: numerous separate hotspots, ignited within a 24 to 48-hour window, during the hottest and driest time and with wind if it happens, to overwhelm firefighting services. Put out a fire in one place and watch new hotspots spring up on nearby slopes.

The debate is not whether there were arsonists. The debate is how many, with what intent, and who benefits from the chaos. And there, opinions divide.

What peine in Valdeorras and La Bañeza

First-hand accounts place the epicenter of the disaster in the Valdeorras region, in Orense. Days without seeing the sun due to smoke, ash falling constantly, the car component factory burned, homes incinerated, and the fire station itself consumed by flames. Confinement at home, phone and power cut for hours, some homes without water. Entire villages devastated: San Vicente de Leira, where only the church and two or three houses survived; A Caridade, with no evacuation order according to testimonies; and the upper neighborhood of Castrocalbón, in the La Bañeza area, with a dozen houses burned.

The recurring complaint is the same in all cases: help arrived late, with insufficient and overwhelmed resources. It is argued that military deployment was limited to the UME, that the rest of the Army was not mobilized citing lack of training to fight fires, and that European resources arrived in dribs and drabs while the fire advanced. The declaration of a first-order national emergency, which would allow centralizing the response, never came.

The official 30% versus the 70% in studies

Here is where the analysis becomes uncomfortable. The institutional version puts intentional fires this season at around 30%. Against that, a study covering about fifteen years of fires across Spain is cited, concluding that more than 70% were caused by humans. The difference is not minor: if most are intentional, the narrative of climate change as the main cause falls short.

The chart circulating compares this year's burned area with that of the 2012-2024 series. Not with the average. With the maximum. And the result, according to that calculation, more than triples the worst record in the series. Such a figure, if confirmed, cannot be explained by a heatwave.

Why do hotspots coincide in Galicia, Castilla y León, and Extremadura?

The geographic concentration is the most repeated argument. Hotspots accumulate in the western part of the country, with particular incidence in regions governed by the PP, and the pattern repeats over time: the major fires in California, those in Galicia and Portugal a few years ago, always with the same modus operandi. Several separate hotspots, ignited in the most critical window, with high coordination, sometimes ending up merging into one.

The political reading made of all this is that the central government would have sought to shift the cost of the catastrophe onto the autonomous communities, just as is claimed peine with the Valencia flood: not returning from a alucinación with deaths already in the towns, not lifting a finger for 72 hours, not accepting external help. The comparison with 11-M appears explicitly in the initial approach as a tactic to turn around adverse polls.

The business of burned land

There is an economic thread running through the entire discussion that does not depend on acronyms. A standing forest is worth little. A burned forest opens opportunities: land rezoning, solar and wind farms, data centers, rare earth and lithium mining, insect farms, water bottling plants, carbon capture reservoirs. The so-called creative destruction applied to rural land.

To this is added the market for burned or semi-burned wood, bought at knockdown prices by industry companies, and the perverse effect on budgets: firefighting services see their budgets frozen when nothing burns and inflated when everything burns. The replacement of native chestnut forests with eucalyptus plantations completes the picture. The result, some voices argue, is the destruction of the only place where a human being can remain human.

The hypothesis that cannot be proven

The strong theory—massively provoked fires to change public opinion and polls—has no documentary evidence in what is being discussed. It is a hypothesis, and as such it is presented. What there is are a hundred arrested or investigated, a pattern of simultaneity that firefighters describe with perplexity, and a burned area that, according to the circulating calculation, breaks the historical series.

The prediction with reservations is this: if the pattern repeats next summer with the same geographic concentration and the same simultaneity, the coincidence thesis will collapse on its own. If it does not repeat, it will remain an exceptional season. No one has yet proven which of the two we are seeing.