This initial formula of courtesy is today rhetorical as rarely. How are we? Overwhelmed by the heat, worried about the fires, and fed up with the weather forecasts, which put us on maximum alert for the heatwaves that we will still have to endure in the coming days.The fire in Les Gavarres is not yet out, and more have broken out..In the Anoia region, we had at first thing in the morning the most extensive of those that remain active. The Generalitat Firefighters declared it stabilized this Tuesday morning. This development has allowed almost all confinement orders to be lifted. The firefighters had worked to prevent the fire from crossing the C-15 towards Montserrat. In contrast, the Sentmenat fire remains active, although the head of the Firefighters believes that we have entered a phase of a certain de-escalation.Reinforcements are needed, and the Generalitat has once again called upon the Spanish army unit. And as soon as it was daylight, the air assets returned. The deployment is enormous: 56 ground crews in Sentmenat and about fifty more in Anoia, with the human toll that all this implies, especially when thinking that it is only the beginning of July.The Anoia fire has forced 33,000 people into confinement. Simultaneous fires divide human and material resources, and if they are not stopped, they may even force fire chiefs to decide which fire to prioritize. As we explain on this page, we must consider that, if fires continue to multiply, not all of them can be extinguished.Likewise, the Generalitat Firefighters are very clear: it is impossible to protect all the houses within forests, in developments. And since the principle that human lives come first and then material goods works, what is being done is to evacuate the developments and take people to a safe place, but we will talk about the houses later: it will depend on what can be done based on priorities, wind direction, accessibility, and all other variables. And let's see how Europe is doing:Numerous fires are affecting the south of the continent. Yesterday the fires were mainly located in the Iberian Peninsula, France and Greece, and had already burned 19,000 hectares in total.Yesterday we were talking about solutions, about forest management, about ensuring that farmers do not have to leave their lands, about equipping ourselves with a mosaic landscape of diverse crops that prevents fires from jumping through a continuous mass of vegetation, etc. I hope the parties understand the emergency we live in and are capable of reaching consensus to mobilize budgetary allocations and eliminate bureaucracies. But while this does not happen, there is another reflection to be made, about our individual responsibility. Fires test us as a society, in respecting restrictions, in following recommendations, in studying self-protection measures, in exercising solidarity, and in accepting that our world has changed and selfishness and bad moods will make everything even more difficult. Encouragement to everyone.Good morning.

We start the week the same way we spent the weekend: pending the Gavarres fire. There are still people who cannot return home.

Piera, Sant Boi, Capellades, Òrrius, Gisclareny, Barruera... and so on up to fifteen fires of varying intensity across the territory, adding to the wear and tear caused by the fire that has been burning since Friday in Les Gavarres, in Empordà. That's why the Firefighters, who received more than 100 calls, issued a warning for the coming days, as long as the new heatwave that arrived yesterday, Sunday, in Catalonia lasts and is expected to continue until the end of the week. "We are entering a week in which we could have fires with speeds that exceed extinction capacity throughout the country," warned the Firefighters.

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.

I see Don Joan Maragall rolling down La Rambla with a Mexican hat, reciting in a LOUD VOICE and passing the little plate: “Our Barcelona! The great enchantress!”. Charming, fascinating, magnetic. Like a human, cultural, social, spiritual synchrotron, Barcelona is transforming into a Latin American city. Extremes. Rich and poor. Abundance and misery. Possible and impossible. One and the other. Between. In the middle of.

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.

The most critical point of the Les Gavarres fire is the right flank, as, if it breaks loose over Puig d'Arques, it could cover thousands of hectares of forest land all the way to Girona. Where the most tense moments have been experienced, however, has been on the left flank, close to the urban areas of Calonge and Santa Cristina d'Aro. On Friday afternoon and night, the flames, pushed by the sea breeze, descended to the edge of the houses and the residents spent hours in authentic terror. In the urbanizations of Cabanyes and Mas Toi, residents fled in their cars, spent the night in the open, and the fire burned a house, gateways, gardens, and fences.

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 fire in the Gavarres massif, in Empordà, is stabilized after burning more than 2,300 hectares, mostly forest mass. The Generalitat Firefighters, as President Salvador Illa has announced, have finished stabilizing the fire this Saturday night, around 10 p.m. The right flank of the flames, which was the one that worried the Firefighters the most because it was 30,000 potential hectares in the direction of Girona, had already been completely stabilized in the evening, while the left flank was "two-thirds" stabilized. A few minutes past 10 p.m., the Minister of the Interior, Núria Parlon, gave the expected news: the entire fire was stabilized, on both flanks. Therefore, a less "complicated" night is expected than the last one, when many neighbors lived in fear of the possibility that the flames would burn their homes.

Enjoying an exceptional panoramic view and being able to glimpse, in a 360-degree turn, the Girona plain, the Medes Islands, the Montgrí massif, the Pyrenees, Montseny, the Rocacorba mountain range, and the Guilleries mountains is well worth the effort required for the now legendary Subida a los Ángeles (Ascent to the Angels), with its climb known as Matahomes and a route with a significant elevation gain of 425 meters in just 9 km. Difficulty and scenic beauty (not only that enjoyed once you reach the summit, but also that offered by the entire route, in the heart of the Les Gavarres massif, with such attractive spots as the Bishop's Fountain and the Olivet d'en Sauleda) converge in this race, which celebrates its 62nd edition this Sunday. Established in 1964 by the Gironí Excursionist and Sports Group (GEiEG), it is the oldest mountain race in the State and, despite its difficulty, each year it brings together more than five hundred participants in the three modalities: competitive, popular and inclusive, the latter for people who go in wheelchairs.

A draft blows through the field of dry, golden wheat. The grains form rattles of vellum. The stalks are bent under the weight of the ear, each wheat plant forming a cricket's leg. The entire field is a raft of golden wedges, buried with their legs sticking out.