Amazed by the spectacle the sky was offering, but with considerable fear and anguish, Juan Diego Sandoval spent the critical hours of the forest fire ravaging the Sierra Oeste of Madrid. On Friday, while the fire approached San Lorenzo de El Escorial, the estate he manages alongside his brothers Mario (chef at Coque) and Rafael in this town, El Jaral de la Mira, was hosting a wedding with the atmosphere tinged orange and the uncertainty not only of a difficult evacuation but also that the project they have been working on for almost a decade could be destroyed by the flames.
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Concern struck him already on the way to the event. “At 5:00 p.m., the A-6 was congested, with all cars stopped and the sky red, full of smoke. It looked like the apocalypse,” Juan Diego recalls in conversation with EL MUNDO.
Upon arriving at the estate, a rustic land where besides hosting events the Sandoval brothers promote a sustainable agriculture and livestock project, the situation worsened. “We had a wedding at 6:00 p.m. and they were getting married there. The bride, who was coming from El Escorial, was delayed an hour due to the traffic jam. The sky was of absolute beauty, orange in color, but we were terrified,” he recounts about the proximity of the fire.
In continuous communication with the Police, he spent hours at his estate, attentive to the evolution of what has already become the most significant fire in the Community of Madrid. “They evacuated the El Escorial campsite, which is only a kilometer from here. We held on while the event took place, but it was very tough. I didn’t know where to hide,” adds the also head waiter at Coque.
In that situation, he points out, he did the little that was in his hands: moving to the high area of the estate, with more than 120 hectares, the more than 350 heads of livestock they have, including fighting bulls, horses, and blonde sheep from El Molar, an endangered species they are trying to recover from there. Days before, they had secured more than a hundred panels with one and a half million bees from a Villa del Prado estate that has disappeared in the fire.
“With the machinery we have, we went around the entire perimeter. Although, thanks to the animals, we have everything very clean and it is harder to burn,” Juan Diego maintains about the preventive work they did on the land in case the flames approached.
They also offered to help in “the only thing” they could do. “We called the president of the Community of Madrid in case they wanted us to bring food somewhere, but she told us it was not necessary, that World Central Kitchen was already there. And we got in touch with the mayor of San Lorenzo,” he adds, encompassing the work of his brothers, who during the fire were also attentive to the situation, one in the kitchen of Coque and the other, a former bullfighter, at home recovering from an accident.
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Hours with the flames on the horizon
“I went through seven or eight hours of tension not knowing what to do. I couldn’t stand still,” Juan Diego recalls, as from the estate he saw the flames in the distance and also the situation of the roads, which, with the uncontrolled fire, did not improve.
“At 10:00 p.m., there was an absolute collapse due to evacuees. Until that cleared up, I couldn’t breathe. The situation was heartbreaking,” says the businessman, who suffered knowing that there were more than a hundred people at his estate during the wedding and that getting them out would not have been easy.
“I stayed until 5 in the morning, when the situation began to improve. By then the fire was already less intense and there was less smoke,” he recalls.
The change in wind and the work of the forces deployed in the area were fundamental, he says, so that the fire did not reach San Lorenzo de El Escorial. “With the wind that was blowing, in two hours we could have had it here. Thanks to the work they did ahead, with firebreaks, we are here,” he says relieved.
“It would have been a shame. We have given our lives here. The work of nine years on the land would have been lost. We have a beautiful story inside the estate,” he assures after pointing out that, besides livestock, they are developing a sustainable garden project without pesticides to recover extinct species and trying to regenerate the soil of the area and also the water to bring it to a mill from the time of Philip II.
On Saturday and Sunday the Sandoval brothers were able to celebrate the weddings they had planned (including the 25th anniversary of master chef Pepe Rodríguez) without any incident, but they know they have been very lucky: “I have been seeing the areas that have burned and what people have lost is devastating. Thank God we are here, but prevention must be worked on. The fault lies with humans. The countryside must be clean and the people who work it know how to take care of it. Today we have to ask for permission for everything and we want to be able to cut down a tree without being sued.”