Four hundred Portuguese firefighters and forest agents, as well as seven aerial means, were struggling yesterday afternoon to control the fire in Vila Pouca de Aguiar, 66 kilometers south of the Ourense municipality of Verín. The fire, whose origin the police attribute to a farmer already arrested, devastated some 3,000 hectares of pine forests. The one in Vila Pouca was the highest incident in a quiet day, waiting for the risk situation in the coming days and in a country devastated by fire in recent decades. Since 1980 the equivalent of 55% of its Iberian surface has burned, although in this torrid summer it resists better than Spain.
A group of volunteer scientists belonging to the Portuguese Association of Data Science for Social Good compiled the information of the last 41 years. It is, according to the newspaper Público, a laborious job, due to the dispersion of the data or due to discrepancies in the categories used. It should not be forgotten that for a long time the impression that the traveler in the interior of Portugal took with him was that it seemed that uncontrolled fires were not greatly hindered and often merged with others in a fatal spiral.
The balance of the project, led by the scientist Nadiia Basos, indicates that since 1980 4,858,330 hectares have burned in Portugal. Those 4.86 million are equivalent to 48,583 square kilometers. It does not mean that just that surface has been burned, because in some cases the fires are recurrent in the same places.
The "continental Portugal", which is what the media call the Portuguese part of the Peninsula, occupies just over 89,000 square kilometers, so the area burned is around 55%. If the same analysis is carried out for Spain based on government data, the percentage obtained is much lower, 13%.
Only in the infamous 2017 in Portugal, 6% of its Iberian territory burned, with more than half a million hectares burned, which includes the more than 50,000 of the Pedrogrão Grande fire in June, which caused 66 deaths. Then there was another brutal wave in October, coinciding with the one registered in Galicia when the flames entered the center of Vigo.
The 2017 catastrophe caused a shock in Portugal, which reinforced its resources and opted for a change in its forestry policy. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa could even be seen pulling out eucalyptus shoots with his own hands, the tree that covers most of the Atlantic façade, which spreads fire and takes advantage of it to spread.
The following years were not catastrophic, as shown by the less than 30,000 hectares burned last year. This summer of extreme heat is the great litmus test. The president and the prime minister, António Costa, even suspended their trips abroad due to the alert situation. There were difficult moments, but without loss of control. It has burned twice as much as in 2021, but it is a third of what is estimated to have burned in Spain.
