With forest fires, there are a few pieces that don't fit: we have learned the importance for a country of its food sovereignty to not depend on third parties, and to preferably consume zero-kilometer products, in order to reduce the ecological footprint as much as possible. These are products that our farmers, often sons and grandsons of farmers, could produce, who would very much like to stay on their lands, but the numbers don't add up because they are strangled by prices or cannot compete in quantity.

When a fire devastates a region, the first figures that appear are the hectares burned, the destroyed homes, and the agricultural losses. These are incomplete data. It is necessary to distinguish between direct, indirect, induced (or long-term), and intangible costs. The analysis does not incorporate the human cost of the injured or lost lives. It focuses on the economic impact.The direct costs are the most evident: lost timber, destroyed crops, dead livestock, damaged homes, affected roads or power lines and, of course, the cost of extinguishing the fire: about 10,000 euros per hectare.The indirect effects: a fire can make a large part of a region's economic activity disappear for months. Rural tourism is one of the first affected. Reservations and visits are cancelled, and many travelers, even if the fire is already extinguished, opt for other destinations. This affects the hotel industry, small businesses, and outdoor activity companies. Their income can drop for weeks or even several seasons.Extraordinary resources allocated to restoring forests, repairing infrastructure, strengthening surveillance, and granting aid to those affected are no longer allocated to other productive investments. This is the so-called opportunity cost.Among the induced costs, also called long-term costs, are future investment losses: the entrepreneur who was thinking of opening a rural house or a business and postpones the project or moves elsewhere… A fire reduces future investment, employment, and activity. It is an economic damage that is difficult to measure because no one knows what is not happening.And, finally, intangible environmental costs, without a market price but with an enormous economic cost: the loss of biodiversity, of carbon capture, of water regulation, of protection against erosion or, simply, of the destroyed landscape value. These damages can exceed the value of material losses.The cost of the Gavarres fire, adding up all the concepts, will probably exceed 150 million euros. Destroying a forest takes a few hours; rebuilding the economic fabric around it takes a whole generation.Now I take off my economist hat. And costs appear that the economy does not capture: the sadness of seeing our Catalonia burn, the fear that invades us, the psychological impact on those affected and those not affected and, above all, the distrust towards our neighbor.Last week, the flames of a wildfire covering several hectares reached a few meters from my house. Last night, a neighbor was celebrating a gender reveal (party to announce the baby's sex) with rockets and firecrackers. Eight days earlier, part of his municipality had burned down.I wondered how long it takes to forget what a fire entails.

We have barely started July and Catalonia has already experienced two intense heat episodes (the second will last until Wednesday), which has turned the forest mass into a powder keg. In this context, fires like the one in La Bisbal d'Empordà, which threatens the entire protected area of Les Gavarres and has forced several towns in Empordà to be confined, are, unfortunately, part of a new normal that must be faced. Whether the origin was work with an angle grinder or any other human activity is not the important thing, as accidents can always happen, but rather how we can manage the territory in times of climate change to prevent these new generation fires from ravaging natural landscapes and endangering human lives.

The Generalitat (Catalan regional government) Fire Department has managed to control the fire that broke out this Saturday at noon in a forested area surrounded by vineyards in Cadaqués. The emergency services have worked with nine aerial crews and 25 ground crews to extinguish the blaze, which they received notification of shortly before noon. The flames have affected approximately 14.5 hectares, according to provisional data from the Rural Agents, who believe the cause of the fire was the use of a brush cutter. Fire Department has not had to evacuate anyone, but some residents left their homes of their own volition when they saw the fire. The emergency services plan is to continue working with eight crews throughout the night and hope to completely extinguish the fire between Sunday and Monday.

A total of 70 crews (57 land and 13 air) are working to extinguish a fire between Port de la Selva and Llançà, which started near Cau del Llop housing estate. According to the firefighters' report, the flames, stoked by the wind, reached the bottom of the ravine and are moving up the Santa Creu valley. As a precaution, residents of the housing estates of Santa Isabel, Vall de la Santa Creu and Beleser have been asked to leave their homes due to the proximity of the flames. According to the first estimates of the Forestry Agents, the flames have already devastated an area of 60 hectares, 59 of which are within the Natural Park of Cap de Creus.