It had been 10,000 years since European bisons grazed the fields of Madrid. Until a year ago, in June 2025, Raúl Rodríguez and his partner, Víctor Manuel Alonso, decided to bring them back by dedicating a large part of their extensive estate to establish Bisonte Park. This natural reserve is nestled in a valley between the municipalities of Colmenar del Arroyo and Robledo de Chavela, an idyllic place where holm oaks, junipers, and savinas dyed the landscape green as far as the eye could see.
At least until this weekend. The massive wildfire ravaging the southwest of the Community of Madrid has turned 160 of the 240 hectares owned by this pair of ranchers into an ashen black. “I can hardly believe it,” begins Raúl, who around 6:00 p.m. on Friday found himself in the center of an almost deadly trap.
After hearing that Robledo was going to be evacuated and faced with the relentless advance of smoke and flames, he asked a transport company for help to evacuate his horses and mares. However, when the truck was heading there, a checkpoint blocked its passage and the help never arrived. It was then that Raúl began running back and forth, leaving water for the animals at different points and trying to open the gates so they could be as free as possible.
“I knew the bisons would be fine. They are bovines that graze and keep their territory clean almost instinctively. But the horses… We have a mare that cost half a million euros. They are purebred and of English origin. Some are even champions at the Zarzuela racetrack,” explains Raúl, who disobeyed the orders of the Civil Guard who urged him to leave.
Just a few minutes later, amid roaring wind and noise, the rancher heard the screams of his father and Javier, a neighbor who had stopped to help them. “Please, come quickly. We can’t get out through Colmenar or Robledo anymore. We’re stuck here,” they shouted. Looking up, he saw the severity of the situation: there were “tremendous flames” just 250 meters away, and they were beginning to surround his property.
Javier was in a pick-up, and Raúl and his father followed him in their city Mercedes. “He told us to follow him, that he knew some secondary paths. But they were almost impassable trails, full of rocks, potholes… The fire was on our left, about 40 meters away, if he got ahead we were lost because he was closing the way. I drove as fast as possible, but with great fear of blowing a tire or getting trapped…”, recalls the rancher.
His mind, at that moment, kept reliving the images of the Almería fire, where several people died burned inside their vehicles in a fiery ambush. Fear already had a face. “Finally, after the longest 10 minutes of our lives, we saw police and knew we were out of danger. We hugged Javier and thanked him because he had saved our lives, we would never have known how to take that path.”
After this ordeal, it took them four hours to reach the capital amid traffic jams and road closures. That night, Raúl didn’t sleep a wink. In fact, at first light, he dressed and returned with his father, his partner Víctor, and their veterinarian, Laura, to the estate with the fear of finding their horses burned.
A Civil Guard patrol blocked their way near Villamantilla. They didn’t care, they used alternative roads and paths to reach their property. “As soon as we parked, we saw them moving. We broke down crying. They had some scratches, minor damage, but they were all fine. Our bovine livestock, 25 cows and a stallion, had saved them thanks to eating the grass in that plot, creating a firebreak.”
The same scenario was found inside Bisonte Park: all the ground where these bovines trot was intact, even retaining its greenish colors. The relief Raúl felt upon confirming he had saved all his animals was complete. And, alongside it, another feeling began to grow: helplessness.
That’s why he recorded a video showing the contrast between the two areas, the burned one and the preserved one, where he expressed his resignation: “Here, where they don’t allow anything to be touched, everything has burned. And right where the best firefighters in Spain, the bisons, are, a natural firebreak has been created.”
Yesterday, calmer, Raúl couldn’t get out of his head how environmental regulations make certain actions, such as cutting trees, removing wood, or agricultural burns, subject to authorizations or administrative procedures, which hinders agile forest management. And he concluded: “We have been requesting for months to be allowed to clean the stream area, but nothing. And other areas, with brush and brambles, neither. They are pushing ranchers out of the countryside. They don’t allow anything to be touched, they only intimidate or threaten to fine. We only ask for common sense and fewer obstacles.”
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