Arantxa Alc\u00e1zar stepped into her garden on Thursday when she heard police officers shouting at residents to evacuate their homes in Villa del Prado, a town west of Madrid. The blazes that had been raging in the distant mountains were now sweeping down their street.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike a river of fire,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She fled with her mother, Consuelo Lorza, 88, and her 11-year-old daughter, Sara, to another town, only to have to evacuate again hours later, to a nearby village. The following day, they were forced to flee once more, this time to the town of Villamanta.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been sleeping here for three days \u2014 if you can call that sleep,\u201d Ms. Lorza said on Sunday morning. She shared a bunk with her granddaughter, while Ms. Alc\u00e1zar spent the night in her car with the family dog. They eventually found out that Ms. Alc\u00e1zar\u2019s home had been spared.<\/p>\n
A fire on Sunday in Betxi, along Spain\u2019s Mediterranean coast, north of Val\u00e8ncia, the country\u2019s third largest city. Credit…Eva Manez\/Reuters<\/p>\n
More than 200 people were staying on makeshift bunks inside a sports hall in Villamanta on Sunday, anxiously waiting to learn whether they would be allowed to return home or whether the flames were advancing toward them. Some tried to nap after lunch while children kicked a football around, using one of the hall\u2019s goals.<\/p>\n
In total, around 90,000 people in central Spain had been evacuated from their homes or ordered to take shelter as firefighters battled what Isabel D\u00edaz Ayuso, the Madrid region\u2019s president, described as \u201cthe worst wildfire\u201d in the region\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
Ms. Lorza had just been comforted by King Felipe VI and Queen Letizia, who visited the sports hall to show their support. \u201cThe queen told me she couldn\u2019t believe it. Evacuated three times!\u201d Ms. Lorza said.<\/p>\n
The evacuation center in Villamanta, a repurposed sports hall, on Sunday.Credit…Joseph Fox for The New York Times<\/p>\n
King Felipe VI said on Sunday that the wildfires in Madrid and the neighboring Toledo and \u00c1vila regions remained active but that there were some \u201cpositive signs\u201d in the fight against the blazes.<\/p>\n
In the Madrid region, fire had destroyed 43 homes and severely damaged more than 300 others, Ms. D\u00edaz Ayuso said. \u201cThat number will rise enormously, as we have never seen before,\u201d she said, tears welling in her eyes.<\/p>\n
Across central Spain, 77,000 hectares \u2014 about 190,000 acres \u2014 have burned, the country\u2019s public broadcaster reported.<\/p>\n
A street in the town of Pelayos de la Presa, less than 20 miles northwest of Villamanta. The scale of the damage from the wildfires west of Madrid is only beginning to emerge. Credit…Oscar Del Pozo\/Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/p>\n
Some evacuees in Villamanta complained that they had received little information about the status of the fires. They waited nervously near their cars, eating churros.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe watch the fires every minute\u201d through security camera feeds, said Carmen Bautista, 53, who had slept, along with her husband, in their van beside the sports center. They had watched the flames approach their home in Caravan Garden, a nearby development, but it was now safe.<\/p>\n
Ms. Bautista lamented that residents had endured one natural disaster after another \u2014 the pandemic, then the deadly floods that swept away three bridges \u2014 and that each one seemed worse than the last.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the previous catastrophes, you could stay at home. Now \u2026\u201d she broke off, spreading her arms in resignation. <\/p>\n
Carmen Bautista, 53, with her son next to and her husband in the front seat. The family has been sleeping in their vehicles in Villamanta since Thursday. Credit…Joseph Fox for The New York Times<\/p>\n
While firefighters struggled to bring the blazes under control, some residents took matters into their own hands. In the mountains around Robledo de Chavela, where the flames had torn through pine forests and holm oaks, several residents on Saturday slipped past police roadblocks to fight the fires.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe may be doing something slightly illegal, but we have saved this part of the mountain,\u201d Javier Quijada, 30, said on a video call. Mr. Quijada and dozens of other residents, all members of the local hunting association, had been fighting the flames with hoses, shovels and even green branches they used to try to smother the fire. He said police officers eventually waved them through, warning them to be careful.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is our mountain. Our lives are going up in flames,\u201d Mr. Quijada said. \u201cI\u2019ve lost count of how many tears I\u2019ve shed since the fire began.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arantxa Alc\u00e1zar stepped into her garden on Thursday when she heard police officers shouting at residents to evacuate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":61146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[24566,66,22974,556,82,8218,17,12315],"class_list":["post-61145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-madrid","tag-bordeaux-france","tag-europe","tag-fires-and-firefighters","tag-france","tag-madrid","tag-madrid-spain","tag-spain","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}