If anything, the fire situation is even worse today in Galicia. Or in the Pontevedra province at least. There are fires in all the surrounding mountains and the city itself lies beneath a shroud of smoke. If this really is the work of pyromaniacs, they certainly have been industrious. My elder daughter and I have just got back from the village of my friends on the other side of the city, where panic was setting in as the revitalised fire again threatened the petrol station. Fortunately, the flames again receded so we returned home down the devastated and still-smouldering mountainside. And now we’re concerned about the plume of black smoke that’s approaching the house from the mountain behind us. So you‘ll forgive me if I leave you with this comment from Fernando in Ferrol, while I go and give some thought to Plan A and Plan B. . .

I guess we have the same ratio of pyromaniacs as in any other part of Spain. We’re not the only ones to have trees; and, even though there aren’t the enormous stretches of eucalyptus in the north of the country, there is almost as much forested land as here in Galicia.

So, what is the difference?

Could it be ignorance and greed? An ignorance that is a bar to understanding of how much is lost, and which for some reason has always underappreciated what can’t be seen, measured or weighed? A greed which is more than mere greed, a stinginess for which nothing is more serious than money, above which is ranked very little.

I know that in every place there are problems, defects and deficiencies. But I often think we Galicians don’t deserve our land.