A total of 21 cars burned at dawn this Monday in the town of Tui in Pontevedra, registering at least five points of fire in different areas of the historic center of the city.
As reported by sources from the City Council and 112 Galicia consulted by Europa Press, it was minutes before 4 in the morning when the first fire was recorded. The person who called the emergency services indicated that there were three vehicles burning in the Plaza de la Armada.
From there, the Integrated Emergency Care Center 112 Galicia began to receive a “constant drip” of calls from different streets of the old town describing a similar scenario.
Minutes later, another citizen claimed that a car was burning very close to a house, the flames affecting the property, which burned a window, a door and a water collection gutter.
For all this, both Spanish and Portuguese media were notified, mobilizing firefighters from Valença and those from Baixo Miño and Ponteareas, in addition to the GES from Mos and Civil Protection volunteers from Tui, Salceda and Tomiño.
After putting out the fires early this morning, it is now the agents of the Local Police and the Civil Guard who are collecting information to draw conclusions about what could have happened. The operation also had the support of the Tui City Council authorities.
Precisely the mayor, Enrique Cabaleiro, has described the events as “very serious” as it is a “true tragedy”. In addition, in statements to Europa Press, he has indicated that it was not “vandalism”, but a “premeditated” event, since practically all the vehicles parked in the spaces set up in the historical case have been burned.
Likewise, he regretted that since they were narrow streets, this made it difficult for the means of extinction to act. This morning a meeting of local spokespersons was convened, which was also attended by the Government sub-delegate, Maica Larriba.
Larriba has described the burning of the vehicles in the town as a “vandal act”, but there is still no information on who or who may have been the perpetrators of this event. The subdelegate has claimed that these events “have nothing to do with the reality of Tui” which, in her opinion, is a “safe” town that has security levels higher than the average for Galicia and the province.
The area with the highest number of charred cars is the Plaza de la Armada Española, in the historic center of the Tudense town, where five vehicles have burned, one of them very close to a house.
This was reported by the head of the O Porriño fire department, Pablo Antonio Ordóñez, who was part of one of the first emergency teams to arrive in Tui after receiving a call at 3:40 a.m. warning of three cars on fire.
Once in the area, firefighters found that there were more vehicles on fire. “We had to notify more media because we were not enough and we had to gradually extinguish by priority,” said the person in charge of the extinction services.
The neighbors came to collaborate with the firefighters using hoses and buckets of water, some even from the windows of their homes. “They were very bright flames. They had to put something on it because the cars burned a lot and very fast,” said Arturo Martínez, a resident of the area who helped remove a vehicle with a rope to prevent the flames from spreading to him.
“I thought a house was on fire,” said Miguel Botelo, another resident of downtown Tui who went out when he heard several explosions.
The Government sub-delegation has reported that the investigation teams of the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard are already working with the municipal technicians to clarify what has happened and a team from the criminal laboratory of the Civil Guard of A Coruña will work on the case.
For his part, the councilor has conveyed a security message to the residents and has assured that the local government will be “at the side” of those affected.
