Zamora (EFE) the largest forest fire of the last decade in Spain with nearly 31,500 hectares destroyed.
Culture is the guiding thread of the posthumous memory of the manguerista Daniel Gullón, surrounded by flames when he worked in the extinction work; the shepherd Victoriano Antón, who was surprised by the fire with his sheep in the field; Eugenio Raton, trapped by fire when he was fleeing by car; and the volunteer Ángel Martín, who was making a firebreak with a backhoe when the flames engulfed him in a change of wind.
The memory of those four people and the feelings of sadness due to the devastation of the fire and the tense situations experienced a year ago now surface this weekend especially in two of the municipalities hardest hit by the fire: Tábara and Otero de Bodas.
In Tábara, the Poetiza association has promoted a recital with the participation of poets and musicians from Zamora, Salamanca, Valladolid and Portugal to pay a cultural tribute to the four fatalities.
The promoter of the initiative and head of the Poetiza collective, Benito Pascual, has pointed out that although the population of the area has not yet recovered from that devastating fire, nature has, in part, shown that it is “much stronger and much more resilient than the human being”.
Pascual has ensured that the tribute paid in Tábara is one of justice, “of dignity, of claiming and building the future.”
Stone bond and solidarity
In addition, the association La Culebra no se calla, which arose from the neighborhood outrage over the fire, carried out throughout this week with the participation of volunteers an artistic work in dry stone in memory of the deceased entitled “Evocation”.
It is a stone wall in the shape of a giant loop that is located in the middle of the mountain in Otero de Bodas (Zamora) and is visible from the National Highway 631, a communication route that runs parallel to the Sierra de la Culebra.
The fire in which four people died originated in the municipality of Losacio and was the second major fire recorded last year in the surroundings of the Sierra de la Culebra de Zamora, an area of pine forests and mountains of great faunal and environmental wealth that It is part of the Meseta Ibérica cross-border biosphere reserve.
The fire broke out just a month after another large fire started on June 15 in Sarracín de Aliste and Ferreras de Abajo that destroyed another 25,000 hectares in the area.
In both cases, the flames were caused by lightning from dry storms and the virulence of the fire was contributed to by extreme weather conditions marked by high temperatures, wind and low humidity. EFE