NAVAS DEL REY, July 29 — Returning to her home at the heart of the wildfires near Madrid, Maria Paz Bolanos’s voice trembled as she declared it undamaged, by some “miracle”.
After flames forced her to evacuate the village of Navas del Rey, the facade and interior of her home were intact, with only the garden devastated by the flames.
“It must have been grandfather, my father in heaven, he somehow made it so the fire just came and stopped right there,” she told AFP, pointing to the spot where the blaze ended its course in the narrow garden.
“The house is a little bit scorched, but for now the house is fine,” the 62-year-old added. “It’s a miracle.”
She had lived there for half a century and “the whole family got married here, we had children here,” she said.
The village of 3,500 was evacuated last week as the flames approached in the Madrid region’s worst fire on record.
She and her husband Fernando and son Alejandro “were glued to the television and our phones for four days trying to get news” before the government authorised them to return yesterday.
‘Disaster’
Not everyone in Navas del Rey was so lucky.
Evacuated residents gradually began returning late in the afternoon after receiving authorisation, bringing life back to a village that AFP had found completely deserted at midday.
In this wooded, hilly area, the fire appeared to have chosen its path at random.
In one spot, two cars lay completely burned out beside a building so badly damaged that it was difficult to tell what it had been a week earlier, reduced now to a heap of twisted metal.
Elsewhere however, it spared a large house with a swimming pool, whose water was merely covered in ash.
A short distance away, a father and his two sons surveyed the damage in silence: their home had not withstood the force of the flames.
The emotion was palpable as the three men wandered through the gutted house, completely charred and blackened, tears welling up.
They declined to speak, while neighbours came to comfort them in heavy silence.
“It’s a disaster,” one of the sons whispered to an acquaintance.
‘Thank God’
Along the road nearby, half the houses suffered the same fate.
Miriam Jimenez, a 67-year-old retiree, counted herself among the more fortunate.
“Thank God, only the garden has been completely destroyed,” she said.
She recalled childhood memories of the property, which she has known since the age of 12, “when my father bought it as a holiday home through hard work”.
“We don’t know how our house survived,” she added.
By early evening, Navas del Rey was gradually coming back to itself: a welcoming, peaceful Spanish village where everyone knows each other by name.
Now, however, residents call out to each other: “How is your house?”
According to an initial estimate provided to AFP by municipal authorities, around 50 homes were destroyed by the flames and another 50 damaged.
A few kilometres away, meanwhile, the fire remained active with a new heatwave forecast today. — AFP
