Just 1.7 kilometers by road separate the La Ardilla Roja campsite, in San Martín de Valdeiglesias (Madrid), from another camp, that of the Pelayos Monastery, in the neighboring municipality of Pelayos de la Presa (Madrid). 1.7 kilometers that, after the fire, have meant the difference between being completely devastated by the fire -the first- or keeping at least a part standing -the second-. In fact, the distance between being saved or not can be even smaller: at the Pelayos campsite, a street, “five meters”, has divided the land into two halves that reflect the two faces of the fire.
Both campsites are managed by the same person, Esteban Carrasco, who, in a phone conversation with this newspaper, reports that no infrastructure remains safe on the La Ardilla Roja land. “The fire melted them,” he says of the 30 bungalows and 30 mobile homes that made up this complex. The alert arrived there first, and last Thursday, at 5:00 p.m., authorities forced the evacuation of the camp. Two hours later, the pattern would repeat at the Pelayos campsite.
There, according to Carrasco’s estimate, 20% of the “houses”, “14 or 15”, which are in the format of bungalows, mobile homes or caravans, have burned down. “You see it devastated, it looks like a cyclone has passed through,” describes the administrator of this campsite, looking at the charred infrastructures. All of them are located to the right of one of the sand streets that structure this campsite, which in holiday season becomes a small village where you can disconnect on the outskirts of Madrid.
In front, on the left flank of that street, however, “nothing has happened, there has been no fire, there has been nothing,” says Carrasco. The sand path has separated, “let’s say, the good from the bad.” This Saturday, the administrator of this campsite was able to return for a moment to the Pelayos camp, where that saved half stands as a thread of hope for the future.
Read more Side effects of fires: smoke traveling hundreds of kilometers also harms the lungs and heart
Carrasco has been evacuated for two nights: the first he spent in Casavieja (Ávila) and the second, in Madrid. On Thursday, he left his campsites with the 200 people who, he estimates, were staying there at the time. The Civil Guard told them “there was no possibility of doing anything” and that they should evacuate “immediately,” as he told this newspaper yesterday. Now, upon his return to the area, Carrasco has been able to confirm how this Madrid enclave, where tourism plays an important economic role, has been devastated.
At the La Ardilla Roja campsite, he says, the fire arrived “two hours” after it originated from a vehicle that caught fire on a shoulder “more than seven kilometers” away. “The fire has advanced at an electric speed,” he told this newspaper yesterday. Today, after stepping on the ground, he reports that the fire has also affected the Aventura Amazonia park which, like the campsite, is located next to the San Juan Reservoir, one of the recreational points par excellence of the Community of Madrid, and a natural richness of the area.
