VILLAVICIOSA DE ODÓN, Spain — Elvira Menéndez considers herself one of the fortunate ones. Her home still stands, unlike so many others reduced to ash by the deadly wildfires tearing through Spain and France.
Even so, the 79-year-old retiree can’t stop thinking about a young family near her son’s home who weren’t as lucky.
“They have been left with nothing,” she said of the family. “The house has completely burned down, and they have three children.”
Wildfires burning out of control across three provinces in central Spain have scorched tens of thousands of hectares and pushed nearly 90,000 residents from their homes. Across the border in southwestern France, more than 250,000 people have been forced to evacuate as flames tear through the Bordeaux wine region.
For the hundreds of thousands of displaced people, one question looms over everything: What will be left when they’re finally allowed to go back?
Menéndez has no idea when she’ll be permitted to return to Chapinería, her hometown west of the Spanish capital of Madrid. She was spending her third night Sunday at a makeshift shelter inside a sports complex in Villaviciosa de Odón — about a 40-minute drive from the home she fled as the fire closed in.
“At least we’re all together,” said Menéndez, who is staying at the shelter alongside her family and their dog.
On Friday afternoon, two major fires burning near Madrid merged into a single fast-moving blaze, which later combined with yet another fire already burning in Ávila, north of the capital. The situation became severe enough that the government declared a national fire emergency — the first time that has ever happened. The flames subsequently spread into Toledo, a province to the southwest. In total, roughly 77,000 hectares have burned in central Spain alone.
Rocío Domínguez shares Menéndez’s anguish. She fled her home with only the clothes she was wearing at the time.
“All the clothes, all the memories, everything, everything, everything,” she told reporters, describing what she left behind.
“The only thing I had time to grab was a kit I have for the dogs,” the 35-year-old added, her two pets by her side. Every item she now has — clothing, food, toiletries — was provided to her at the shelter.
The evacuation center, which has cots set up for roughly 200 people, is where Domínguez is still processing the terrifying chaos of her escape.
“It was madness with cars going up and down, traffic jams in the village streets as people tried to get out. It looked like the apocalypse,” said Domínguez, who is sheltering with her parents and siblings. “You couldn’t see anything.”
“Everything was covered in ash,” she continued. “You could see all the burned animals.”
On Sunday, Spanish King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia traveled to another shelter in Villamartín, roughly 45 kilometers west of Madrid, to hear firsthand accounts from those displaced by the fires.
Spain’s Minister of Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, later warned that “more evacuations are still expected” in the area.
Queen Letizia told reporters after meeting with survivors that it was vital “to hear how they feel and how they recount their hasty departure from their home. How they have felt the sadness they describe, the anguish, the uncertainty, and those questions they leave hanging in the air.”
The disaster has dramatically shifted the national mood in Spain, which just one week ago was celebrating its second FIFA World Cup championship victory.
As those celebrations give way to grief and worry, head coach Luis de la Fuente — a central figure in the historic win over Argentina in the final held in New Jersey — visited fire evacuees at a sports center in Las Rozas.
The Spanish Football Federation, headquartered in the same city, has opened its training facilities — normally used by the newly crowned world champions — to vulnerable families forced from their homes.
De la Fuente expressed solidarity with those affected, telling national public broadcaster TVE: “All of Spain is watching over them. They have the support of the entire country, the same support we have when we play soccer. It’s exactly the same.”
