The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, went to the Cenicientos Advanced Command Center, which coordinates all efforts and personnel in the fight against the fires devastating central Spain, barely two hours before it had to be evacuated due to the proximity of the flames. Sánchez, who thanked everyone involved for their efforts in the extinction work, stressed that although “complex hours” are being faced, the weekend represents “a window of opportunity to control the fire” and thus “save lives”.
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The President of the Government stressed that although “temperatures have dropped, we do not know the wind’s reaction”. In any case, he emphasized that “our priority is the lives of those affected”, for which “the entire State is putting all resources at its disposal to provide shelter for evacuated and confined people”.
The president defended the need for a State Pact against the Climate Emergency
The PSOE leader used the context to call for attention to science and scientists and encouraged all political forces to join a State Pact against the Climate Emergency. The agreement, he said, must be based on scientific knowledge and institutional cooperation to protect citizens, the economy, and Spain’s rich biodiversity.
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Climate Agreement
The agreement still seeking consensus
The proposal to promote a national pact against the climate emergency – which the President of the Government has repeatedly referred to – was presented last year by Pedro Sánchez himself after the devastating fires last August in Castilla y León. This proposal was debated in the commission for Ecological Transition in the Congress of Deputies; but it ultimately failed due to the opposition of the PP and Vox and because of the reticence expressed by Junts, who also disliked the idea of a “national” pact. The arguments given by the PP spokespersons were eminently political and were along the lines of considering that it was not possible to trust a government they saw surrounded by “corruption” and that had “little time left to live”. The debate did not go beyond the commission, a strategy that the commission’s president, Cristina Narbona, used to avoid a political defeat for the Government in the plenary. Despite everything, the commission for ecological transition gathered two dozen experts and representatives of various social institutions (conservation groups, trade unions, Red Cross…) in several debate sessions, who shaped a broad catalog of initiatives to prevent fires with proposals for rural and agroforestry development, among other measures.
Sánchez added that, at the UME’s consideration, the current fires in Madrid and Ávila are now considered a single fire, which will allow for better use of resources in the fight against the fire. The president also asked citizens to inform themselves through “reliable media and official sources” to avoid the disinformation circulating in this type of tragedy.
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Regarding those evacuated, the leader insisted that the Executive, which leads the response to the fire, “is putting all means at the disposal of the municipalities to accommodate the evacuated”. Sánchez assured that the working principles against the current fires are summarized as “agility in response, coordination of resources, and effectiveness”.
The president assured that the climate emergency is taking on “dramatic overtones” and remarked that over the last 10 years, the average area burned annually in Spain amounts to 100,000 hectares, which means that so far this year that figure has been exceeded by 30%. In absolute figures, and according to data from the Ministry for Ecological Transition, from the beginning of the year until Friday, 131,113 forest hectares have been affected in Spain compared to 24,133.26 in the same period of 2025, which multiplies last year’s data by more than five.
Feijóo calls for ”working together” against the fire to ”refresh the political atmosphere”
For his part, from Santiago de Compostela, the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, called for “refreshing the political atmosphere” and drawing on “responsibility” to work “together” in extinguishing the fire devastating central Spain. The opposition leader, visiting his native Galicia for the celebration of Saint James the Apostle, called for unity because the situation is “critical”.
According to data provided this Saturday by the Interior Ministry, the fires devastating the western sierra of the Community of Madrid and the province of Ávila keep more than 39,000 people evacuated and some 28,000 confined in different localities this Saturday. In the Community of Madrid alone, the flames have scorched almost 10,000 hectares.
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