"Climate fanaticism": far-right denialism resurfaces with the fires
Vox denies climate change and the PSOE calls for a state pact stalled for a year
BarcelonaSpain is experiencing one of the worst fire seasons in the last 10 years, with over 150,000 hectares burned since January. In fact, the fires in Madrid, Ávila and Toledo are the "most serious and aggressive" in the State's history, according to the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the Spanish government has declared these three territories a national emergency zone, with nearly 90,000 evacuated or confined. The macro-fire affecting the center of the State is added to the one from just a few weeks ago in Almería, where there were 13 deaths. Fire has become the main environmental threat of recent summers and its management. And this is where far-right climate denialism has strongly emerged, which the left has tried to confront with empirical evidence of the virulence of recent fires.
Vox is the party that has positioned itself as the main climate change denier. Its leader, Santiago Abascal, has once again evidenced this in recent days when he spoke again of "climate fanaticism" when referring to the causes of the fires in Madrid, Ávila, and Toledo. In fact, he attributes the fire to "corruption, fanaticism, and the mafia" of the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, and not to the climate emergency, but rather to "ideology" and the abandonment of the countryside. "Sánchez is a plague," he even wrote in a recent tweet on X. His party, in fact, is already preparing for after the summer its own proposal focused on regional surveillance which, like Abascal's speech, also does not mention the climate emergency.
On the other hand, the Spanish government tries to confront this denialism by citing the increased virulence of recent fires as an example. For this reason, Sánchez has once again defended the need for a state pact for the climate emergency. A proposal he already launched a year ago after the serious fires in Castilla y León. The Spanish president presented it on September 1, 2025, with 15 expanded pillars after almost 4,000 contributions. This Monday, Sánchez defended it again from La Vall d'Uixó (Castelló), where he once again linked the "sustained and systematic increase" in temperatures with a climate emergency that "exponentially raises" fires.
The Spanish government and the PP have not managed to reach any agreement for this state pact against climate change to see the light of day. In fact, in October, the 14 Popular communities boycotted the Ponferrada convention en bloc, where the Spanish government presented this pact, calling it a "propagandistic approach". The PP, however, does not have a denialist discourse. Last summer, Feijóo anticipated Sánchez and proposed his own plan of 50 measures –he proposed, for example, a registry of arsonists with bracelets.
However, within the PP there are also dissenting voices, such as that of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. In recent days, she has avoided confronting the Spanish government over what she considers a "propagandistic" discourse and, this Tuesday, she made this clear in a press conference in Navalcarnero: "It is not the time to offer broad-brush solutions to absolve ourselves of any responsibility," she said. In any case, it is the same Ayuso who said in the Madrid Assembly in 2022 that "since the Earth has existed, there has been climate change, there have been cycles."
PP-Vox pacts
Although the PP does not deny climate change, its position contrasts with the regional pacts it has signed in recent months alongside Vox. In Andalusia, before 13 people died in the fire in Los Gallardos (Almería), its president, Juanma Moreno Bonilla, sealed a pact of 150 measures with Vox that adopted the term "climate fanaticism" and rejected Brussels' climate measures. Days later, the same Moreno Bonilla acknowledged at the scene of the fire that climate change "is affecting in a very important way". A position that clashes with what his party has signed to govern with the far-right.
Precisely, the third vice-president and minister for ecological transition, Sara Aagesen, touched on this contradiction of the popular party and accused them of "leaving the country unprotected" by governing with deniers in communities that have competence in fires. However, the state pact that Sánchez demands also does not escape the PP's criticism, because they lament that this project has gone almost a year without materializing into any real agreement. Furthermore, the popular party also censures that the planes promised by the Spanish government to reinforce the extinction fleet are not yet operational in this campaign.
