Spain has been ignoring the danger of fires like the one in Los Angeles for years: “All provinces are in a critical situation”

26 dead. 150,000 evacuees. The deadly fires in Los Angeles have highlighted the race towards danger posed by the continued urban expansion towards the mountains in the conditions superflammable that generates climate change. In Spain, in the top 3 of forest fires in Europethese areas where houses touch the forest do not stop growing: in 2010, research estimated that there were already more than one million hectares of urban-forest interface. However, “the situation is worse now,” the professor of Regional Geographic Analysis, Cristina Montiel Molina – one of the authors of that work – tells elDiario.es.

The risk of fire in this interface is double that in a forest, since the presence of humans and their activities can start the fire – in fact, 85% of fires are caused by humans. These areas also make extinguishing work more difficult because putting out a fire is not the same as planning the evacuation of people. The firefighters can’t cope.

Montiel Molina explains that “the surface area of ​​territories at risk has increased and preparation and adaptation measures have not been taken to reduce vulnerability: the population – which is more numerous in those areas and less informed – is not aware of where it lives or of the danger in which he finds himself. Nor does he know how to act in case of risk. The situation is very worrying and I am not exaggerating,” he concludes.


Urban-forest interface areas in Spain

graphic: ignacio sanchez. Source: Montiel and Herrero.

Urban-forest interface areas

in Spain*

graphic: ignacio sanchez. Source: Montiel and Herrero.


“We haven’t improved much,” says WWF forest fire specialist Lourdes Hernández. “We continue to see that this urban-forest interface is growing in Spain and that self-protection programs for populations are not widespread.” “We do not have a clear and updated cartography and a quantification of the level of danger,” complains Hernández.

The surface area of ​​territories at risk has increased and preparation and adaptation measures have not been taken to reduce vulnerability: the population is not aware of where they live or the danger they are in.

Cristina Montiel Molina
Professor of Regional Geographic Analysis at the UCM

The risk of putting homes on the edge of the forest is not new. Already in 2006, the Typsa company developed a evaluation and zoning of this danger for the Government. The document indicated the Mediterranean coast as the area with the highest level of risk “due to the typology and number of very dangerous interface situations,” it said.

This analysis especially marked the province of Girona (with very high risk), but in the high range were Barcelona, ​​Tarragona, Castellón, Valencia and Alicante. Also Malaga. Furthermore, the evaluation attributed very high danger to the Community of Madrid and a high level to Ávila (with “many populations near very dangerous trees”). Santa Cruz de Tenerife presented high risk.

However, in 2025, the professor at the Complutense University, Montiel Molina, states that in reality, “all provinces are in a critical situation. The Mediterranean area, due to the climate and the territorial model, is worse, but in Atlantic Spain the urban development of the interface, whether in Galicia or the Basque Country, is very great.


Distribution of fire risk in the urban-forest interface*

graphic: ignacio sanchez. SOURCE: MITECO. prepared by Typsa, 2006

Distribution of fire risk in the

urban-forest interface*

Low

Half

High

very high

No data

graphic: ignacio sanchez.

SOURCE: MITECO. prepared by Typsa, 2006


After all this time since that evaluation, Lourdes Hernández points out that “it still happens a little like with floods. We continued building where there was danger and we did not integrate the risk of fire into urban planning when it is a reality that is already here: we do not know where it will occur exactly, but we do know that the conditions exist. “That the fire is going to happen.”

In this sense, “the danger is not being considered at all, unfortunately,” Montiel Molina analyzes. Disaster management services warn and prepare for it, but in the social and political sphere they are very far from that reality.”

The transatlantic warning

“What happened in Los Angeles is giving us a warning that must be considered very seriously despite the differences,” says CREAF researcher Josep María Espelta. This biologist explains that “the intermediate phases between urban centers and the forest mass have disappeared. The expansion of urbanization to the forest means that the fire reaches the door of the house and makes extinguishing efforts difficult.”

Espelta has just published a work in which he proposes recovering open crop and pasture spaces to protect buildings in the Metropolitan Area of ​​Barcelona. “In addition, they are spaces of biodiversity,” he adds. The idea is to break the “continuity of the fire.” That the flames – or the incandescent embers – cannot jump from one place to another easily.” In this way, he illustrates, “when the fire comes, it will burn more slowly.”

The new era of megafires fueled by climate change based on drought, high temperatures and winds is already here. In California, 12,300 homes and businesses have burned. In the fire that devastated the city of Fort Mc Murray in Canada In 2016, 2,400 houses burned (and 540,000 ha).

The researcher at the Center for Technological Risk Studies of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Pascale Vacca, argues regarding houses that “in the Mediterranean we are in a better situation than in North America because we build with more fire-resistant materials such as concrete, but that It does not mean that there is 100% security because we have seen that flames can penetrate through windows or roofs without maintenance.”

Right now there is no regulation that says how to build in the urban-forest interface and what materials cannot be used.

Pascale Vacca
Researcher at the Center for Technological Risk Studies (UPC)

What the peri-urban fires in Los Angeles are showing – and it had been detected in Canada – is that few houses burned due to the flames of the trees or radiant heat, but that the combustion began from a “intense bombardment of embers”, as certified by the analysis of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction.

Vacca, an expert fire engineer, emphasizes that, however, “right now there is no regulation that says how to build in the urban-forest interface and what materials cannot be used. We have guides, but not regulations, so we have to work on that.” Furthermore, he insists, not only the building’s own material is important, but also the entire surroundings of the houses: “At least in a perimeter of 30 meters, we must ensure that there is no flammable material such as garden furniture or fences with vegetation to hide ourselves.” from the neighbor raised with plants that burn very well.”

Territorial planning powers are in the hands of the autonomous communities. The Ministry of Ecological Transition responds that it is processing a royal decree so that the regional anti-fire plans “list the urban-forest interface zones that have been mapped.”

Cristina Montiel Molina believes that, faced with this risk, “the first thing is to ring the warning bell.” And then, “there are two primary recipients. First, the city councils should develop self-protection plans because this reality exists in almost all municipalities. And secondly, the autonomous communities because they are the ones that organize the territory (and give approval to urban plans) and can avoid the development of these territories at risk and reduce vulnerability to fires.”

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