In the darkness of the night, it seemed that the flames would engulf the houses of Cholera. The fire reached the doors of the homes of some residents of this small coastal town of Alt Empordà, who explain how they felt real fear as the fire approached and they complied with the order to remain confined to his house The bravest speak of respect. The less, use terms such as panic and terror. What they both agree on is the feeling of helplessness, with the confidence that if things got complicated, the firefighters would appear, but without the certainty of whether this would actually happen. The strike by the volunteer firefighters and the ban on forest defense groups (ADF) lead residents to wonder if the fire would have come so close to the site with them.
Pau Martínez, who spends the summer with his family in a second residence in the municipality, prepared everything to run out around three in the morning. “We were constantly updating the City Council’s Facebook and Twitter to check the latest information and we talked on WhatsApp with other neighbors”, he recalls. There came a point when the north wind was blowing so hard and the fire was so close to the urbanized part further north in Colera that the whole family got dressed, put their things in the car and were about to start the escape “You looked at the mountain and you saw fire on all sides”, explains Martínez, but since the road was closed they chose to stay at home and wait for a wind that blew the fire from one side to the other to subside .
And yes, it subsided. The fire continued its path of destruction along the valley towards the municipality of Llançà. When the sun came up, in Colera you could barely see a little smoke in the distance, although there were reports of it rekindling later and even some residents took four branches and set about putting it out- them as they could next to the train station, which had traffic interrupted all day between Figueres and Portbou, where its imposing monumental canopy saw the fire up close.
Up to 300 members of the Generalitat have been fighting the fire since Friday afternoon, when a forest fire broke out that has already burned 573 hectares before it was declared stable this Saturday at around 9:30 p.m.
Most of them are forest, although there are also some vineyards and grazing areas that acted as firebreaks and precisely helped to prevent the fire from spreading further. A mosaic in the landscape that firefighters and rural agents always talk about, but which is still not common in the areas with the highest risk of fires in Catalonia. As is not surprising, it is already clear that the origin of the fire is of human origin, according to the rural agents, started next to a forest track that goes from Portbou to the municipality’s reservoir.
In Colera, and even more so in Portbou, they are unfortunately used to looking fire in the eye and suffering devastating fires. The one in 2012 is the most present in the memory, in which a father and daughter died when trying to escape the flames that turned the N-260 into a highway. Since then, they have periodically had several scares in the mountain that surrounds the northernmost municipality in Catalonia.
Its mayor, Gael Rodríguez, is facing his first crisis as mayor after being elected just a month and a half ago and becoming the youngest mayor in the country. This youth made him maintain his firmness in the early hours of the afternoon yesterday after having spent the whole night up and down, first with the various police forces so present in the border population, and then following the operative from the center command station mounted next to the Llançà Fire Station.
From there, where a clear blue sky prevailed, the holidaymakers coming and going from the beach had no idea what was happening on the other side of the mountain. Only a few repaired when they saw the five helicopters taking water near the coast to help from the air in the extinguishing tasks. In the morning it was particularly difficult because of the wind, with gusts of more than 100 km/h, which prevented the large seaplanes mobilized for the emergency from being able to work in the early hours. Extinction was then left to the hands of helicopters and ground troops. In the afternoon, it was possible to take advantage of the calm of the north wind to use the high-capacity aircraft and make decisive progress in the extinction.
While the firefighters were working, some normality was restored in Colera and Portbou. People went to the supermarket to buy and had a cold beer in the bar commenting on the play. With the perimeter confinement in force, residents could not leave the municipality, as in the times of the pandemic. To ensure compliance and facilitate the work of the firefighters, the N-260 road remained closed almost all day yesterday, as it had been since Friday afternoon. Traffic was restored at half past eight in the afternoon, when residents and tourists staying in the municipalities affected by the fire were able to travel by car again on the road to return to their homes and temporary accommodations. It is also planned that railway traffic will be restored from the first hour of this same morning provided that the technicians of the railway infrastructure administrator (Adif) give the go-ahead after verifying that the infrastructure has not suffered any setbacks due to the fire.
The interruption of the train and the only way in and out by car for more than 24 hours left many residents and tourists staying in Portbou and Colera unable to return on Friday. One of them was Marta Bernals, who was spending a week at the Sant Miquel de Colera campsite and that day went to the water park in Roses. When they went to get their phones from the booth, they had tons of calls, but it was too late. What was supposed to be a pleasant family day, with their two children aged six and ten, ended up turning into a long excursion that left them stranded in the Llançà sports hall, where the Red Cross provided mattresses and beds so that more than a hundred people who were in the same situation as Marta and her family could rest there. There were people of all ages, from children to a 91-year-old woman, the mother of Àngels Pujol, who, along with her daughter and other family members, also couldn’t get home when they were returning from a funeral in Perpignan on Friday. They all returned yesterday afternoon, before it got dark, so the Generalitat lifted the restrictions in force from Llançà.
Most of those affected were tourists, like Laura and Pierre, a young couple from the French city of Saint-Étienne, staying in an apartment in Portbou with their one-year-old baby. They went shopping in Figueres and when they returned they were also forced to spend the night in the pavilion. The child did not stop crying throughout the night and despaired the parents, who were looking for a way to retrieve their suitcases left in the apartment and put an end to the vacation as soon as possible. Others took it with more resignation and spent the time enjoying the fresh air under the pine trees around the football field.
Amrik Sigh, a neighbor of Llançà with an Indian restaurant in Figueres, was in charge of the food, who arrived every few moments with the trunk of his Tesla full of boxes of hot pizzas and trays full of apples. “It’s the least we can do when there is such a misfortune”, justified Sigh, who when the war in Ukraine broke out spent more than two months at the border cooking to feed all those people trying to flee the country. Yesterday he was helping the neighbors next to his house.
