©Reuters. Firefighters tackle a fire near the village of Piedrafita during a fire outbreak in the Asturias region of northern Spain March 31, 2023. REUTERS/Vincent West
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By David Latona and Vincent West
OVIEDO, Spain (Reuters) – Across Europe, farmers have blocked roads, burned tires and dumped manure to protest against a range of pressures that threaten their livelihoods and way of life. In the province of Asturias, Spain, authorities are preparing for the worst.
Last spring, in an unprecedented blaze, nearly 300 fires swept across highways, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of residents and reaching the border of the regional capital Oviedo. Authorities have blamed many of the fires on farmers.
Decades-old complaints about government interference in traditional farming methods are combining with climate change to create tinderbox conditions, authorities say.
The regional government, prosecutors and environmental groups say some cattle ranchers deliberately set last year’s fires to clear cheap grazing land – fires that got out of hand due to exceptionally hot and dry conditions. Farmers deny it.
Four unnamed people were arrested and 31 are under investigation for the alleged arson, police said.
Alejandro Calvo, head of Asturias’ fire prevention and suppression department, told Reuters the region had increased its budget for preventing and extinguishing fires by almost 20%, to 70 million euros ($75.7 million). , and hired more firefighters and forest rangers to set up 24-hour surveillance systems.
At the root of the problem, authorities say, is farmers’ ancestral practice of intentionally burning brush. The chestnut-colored cattle that roam the mountains and valleys of Asturias date back to the Iron Age. Their grass-fed meat is prized by foodies, their free-range habit is prized over intensively raised meat.
Vegetation left uncontrolled grows chaotically on the grasslands, limiting access to cows, who cannot digest woody or thorny plants. A carefully planned fire can clear the area, generate new grazing areas and discourage predators.
But bureaucracy and a warmer climate have changed history. Since 2004, a permit has been required by law to carry out controlled fires: to obtain one it is necessary to present, among other restrictions, a detailed plan, a topographic map of the area and documents proving ownership of the land.
And Calvo says the region has seen a consolidated rise in average temperatures of two degrees over the past decade – part of a wider trend confirmed across Spain by the meteorological office – which makes traditional fires more dangerous.
“There is… a clear relationship between areas where there is increased ranching activity and the incidence of fires,” Calvo told Reuters in an interview.
On the other hand, Jose Ramon Garcia, head of the farmers’ union UCA, blames the authorities.
“They always try to blame the cattle ranchers, saying we do it to generate pastures and that’s a lie,” said Garcia, better known in Asturias as Pachon, a nickname he inherited from his father.
He said regional leadership is not managing flammable undergrowth well enough, so most large fires are due to natural causes. Deliberate ones cause limited damage, she argued.
“We have so much undergrowth that any lightning strikes start these big fires that threaten people and destroy everything in their wake,” Garcia, 59, said.
He himself was convicted in a local court in 2016 of illegally starting a fire that devastated 38 hectares (94 acres), which he denies. Spain’s Supreme Court overturned his prison sentence on appeal, but upheld his conviction.
According to the most recent official data from the Spanish Ministry of the Environment, events such as lightning are responsible for fewer than five out of 100 fires in the region. According to data, almost eight out of ten fires in Asturias are set deliberately.
DEPOPULATION
Fire Chief Calvo, 49, knows from experience the old ways of managing fires. The son of a ranching family who grew up in the area, he said he would watch farmers set fires to combat overgrowth. He remembers how as a child he helped collect ferns to reduce risks and helped put out fires himself.
But now, he said, as more young people move to cities, there aren’t enough people in the region to clear brush or keep an eye on fires when they start to burn. Instead, her department is conducting public awareness campaigns about the dangers of intentional fires.
“We are trying to make it clear that this is not acceptable, that it can be a crime and therefore must be prosecuted,” said Calvo, in his office in Oviedo.
In Asturias, controlled burning of up to 10 hectares per day is only permitted during daylight hours, when wind speeds are low and with at least one regional official present until no smoke is visible for two hours.
Months after last year’s fires, a group of elderly residents sitting on a bench in the town of Navelgas said they had never seen anything like it.
“I was driving down the road, with smoke coming out of both sides, and I just wanted to cry,” said one man, who declined to give his name.
Navelgas was a gold mining center in Roman times. The gold is long gone, cattle ranching is its mainstay, and its population is just 720. Last August, Spain’s national statistics institute counted the country’s settlements home to a single person and found that most were in the mountainous northwest, including 337 in Asturias.
Economic frustrations in the region date back to Spain’s entry into the European Community in 1986, which triggered a rapid adaptation to a predominantly agricultural society.
Agriculture now contributes just over 1% of the region’s economy. In 2000 it employed less than 6.5% of the population and, according to regional government data, this figure has significantly decreased.
EU subsidies, including the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), have helped mitigate the effects, but an October 2023 European Union survey said the bloc’s small farmers struggle to finance their operations through banks.
The study found that the unmet financial needs of farmers across the EU have almost doubled, to €62 billion, since 2017 and that small farms and young farmers are the hardest hit, with almost one in two not is able to satisfy his own needs.
Garcia, the head of the farmers’ union, says the rural future for his children is too precarious.
“There is no generational change,” he said. “For those of us who have worked on farms all our lives, since we were children, he cannot advise his children to continue running the farm.”
He led several farmers’ protests in Oviedo, as well as speaking to the regional parliament to demand more subsidies for farmers. He said he had invited a local expert to speak to regional politicians, the environmental prosecutor’s office and the police’s rural and environmental crimes unit, “to somehow prevent Asturias from burning completely.”
PROTECTED PREDATORS
In addition to generating grazing land, fires help deter wolves and bears.
The calves — the origin of veal, an Asturian delicacy of which Spain is a major producer — are being eaten by an out-of-control wolf population and farmers bear the brunt of the costs, Garcia said, pointing to data officials showing compensation levels at less than half the market value.
According to the national government, in 2020, the latest year for which data is available, 2,928 unspecified farm animals were affected by wolf attacks, for a compensation of 834,262 euros, or 285 euros per head on average.
Adult cows have a market value of between 5,000 and 7,000 euros per head, while calves between 1,600 and 2,200 euros.
In 2021, Spain’s socialist government in Madrid classified the Iberian wolf as an endangered species, providing fines or prison sentences for those who harm it.
Asturias is also run by the Socialist Party, but its wolf protection policies are unpopular among farmers in this region. In the July 2023 general election, parties courting farmers’ votes – including the far-right Vox party and the centre-right People’s Party (PP) – supported the removal of wolves from the protected list.
In May, a sign of the strength of feelings: two freshly decapitated wolf heads appeared on the steps of the town hall of a small village right before the visit of the regional president.
The Socialists lost ground to the PP candidate in the village of Garcia, while retaining power overall.
Montserrat Fernandez, also a cattle rancher, is the new mayor. She said rural municipalities need more funding from regional and national authorities to help put out fires – using tools such as fire hoses – and more frequent and controlled bush clearing fires.
“It is completely unfair to blame the fires on farmers,” he said. Ultimately, farmers help prevent fires, she argues, because their animals remove combustible material by eating it.
Calvo agrees and says the push for more local control is good, but farmers need to stay in the licensing system.
“There is an underlying feeling in rural areas that things would be better if local society was more involved in the management of its resources,” he said.
“I fully agree with this. We are trying to develop governance tools so that village communities can decide on forest management plans and make them their own.”
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