The hell of Bierzo: "In 92 years I've never seen anything like it."

El Bierzo (Castile and León)The road leading to the village of Lusío, in the León region of El Bierzo, is narrow, and the landscape that stretches out, once green and lush, is now terrifying. The great mountains have turned black, only the branches of the trees remain, and ash piles up. A pile of ash. The sign indicating the name of this town is charred, and a stroll through its streets is almost impossible; they are covered in rubble, and smoke from the constantly rekindling fires still wafts through the air. As far as the eye can see, everything is pitch black.

Rage, grief, and helplessness have taken hold among the residents of one of the areas hardest hit by the numerous and virulent fires ravaging the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. In a matter of days, they have lost everything to the ravages of the blaze. "It was our meeting point," says a tearful resident, who has seen her village disappear due to the blaze that entered the province of León from Galicia. There, at least 15 houses have been left completely uninhabitable.

On Saturday, August 16, a nightmare began from which the residents of this village, which belongs to the municipality of Oencia, still cannot wake up. "Things got really bad that day, with such dark smoke. You could hardly see and you couldn't breathe," says Silvia, a resident who saw her house engulfed in flames. At the time, there were at least 50 people in the village who decided to leave. "We wanted to stay, but everything was pitch black, the fire was coming down the hillside, and we were lucky enough to leave; if we had stayed, I don't know what would have happened," she says.

But the neighbors never imagined that, upon returning, they would never see Lusío as they knew him. "You're leaving because your life matters, but you think they're going to send someone. I'm abandoning my house even though I want to save it, but I put my life above all else and trust that the necessary resources will come, the ones who can put out all these flames. What we couldn't expect was for them to abandon us like this. Absolutely no one came here. No one. What they've done is leave us to our fate," Silvia complains.

Tears stream down the faces of Silvia and her sister Ana as they watch their family home, a house that was more than a hundred years old, disappear. Its walls told stories, in its windows they could hear the voices of their neighbors, and anecdotes, laughter, and tears were hidden between its pillars. "It was our grandparents' house, which passed to our parents, who also passed away. They fixed it up with all their effort, and so did we. We came whenever we could because it wasn't an old house, it was a home, and we came to enjoy this wonderful view," they recall.

"What now?" is the question they ask themselves as they observe how their homes are now a pile of piled stones and ash. "What do we do with all the ruins around us? What do you do with this? Where do you start? You can't think about anything here," Silvia asks herself. Her cries echo in the desolate streets of Lusío and mingle with the wails of others. Another neighbor, who has been luckier because her house was saved, also complains about the neglect they have suffered: "It makes me very angry because since we are a village, they haven't sent us firefighters or helicopters... No help."

At every corner of the region, as you travel through the unstoppable fires, your heart begins to thump. The hell that the Bercian paradise has become is unbearable. A 92-year-old woman from Igüeña is clear: "I've seen many fires in my life, but never anything like what's happening now."

The evacuees are returning home.

The fire quickly spread toward the town of Oencia, which also had to be evacuated. "Thank God the fire didn't reach the town," explains the mayor of this municipality, Arsenio Pombo, who explains that they had no fire prevention plan because the municipality is "very small." "We don't have the resources," he insists. What the residents did do was clear brush and clean their properties. "I've been going to Lusío for three days, bringing them containers because they also burned... What happened there was incredibly helpless," he adds.

The worst part of this whole hell fell to Jörn, a German who left everything a year ago to buy a house in this mountain village. "According to the regional government [of Castile and León], they're going to relocate him because he doesn't have another home," the councilor points out. Jörn says that this "is a huge catastrophe" and that he lost everything he had in his house. He sold his house in Germany and moved to Lusío because it's a "very natural place with lots of water year-round," and because the first time he was in the village, he found neighbors "with such big hearts and such kindness" that he thought the town deserved a chance.

It's funny because, despite being one of three people who lived in Lusío year-round, Jörn is one of the most optimistic residents. "I have wonderful people around me. The villagers have supported each other, and one of the neighbors has given me a place to live," she explains. Now she wants to stay in the village and assures that she will contribute to its rebirth.

But the residents of the western part of the León region bordering Galicia are not the only ones whose lives have changed in seconds. In the Fornela Valley, in the northern area bordering Asturias, the flames also took them by surprise. The inhabitants of the villages in this area, in the Ancares Leoneses Biosphere Reserve, spent four days sleeping outside their homes, with uncertainty, fear, and the insecurity of not knowing what will happen. "We came with what we were wearing, and now we have to wait for them to tell us when we can return. They tell us the villages are not in any danger, that the problem is the smoke, so we could be here today, tomorrow, the day after..." explains one of those evacuated.

The Fornela Valley was known for its mountainous landscape with steep slopes and a riverbed marked by the passage of the river. It has lush vegetation full of oak, chestnut, and beech trees, many of which are now massacred. It is also home to wildlife such as roe deer and wolves, and its traditions are known throughout the region. The presence of forts and pallozas in this protected natural area tells the valuable history of these lands bathed by pre-Roman Asturian settlements. The Chano fort is one of the best-preserved in Castile and León, where you can clearly see what Asturian dwellings were like. The pallozas, typical buildings built in pre-Roman times, stand out for their thatched roofs and circular structure.

Nearly a hundred residents of León's Valle de León towns such as Faro, Cariseda, Peranzanes, Trascastro, Chano, and Guímara remained in the Fabero municipal pavilion from Tuesday to Friday due to one of the most worrying fires in the region, the Anallares fire, which has been raging for two weeks. "It's very hard to have to leave your house suddenly," explains Antonio, another of those evacuated. "My wife and I slept in the car because we thought they would put mattresses here, and we were very cold," says another resident.

Distrust and ignorance reign among those affected. One of the Peranzanes councilors, Ludi Santana, is desperately pleading for help. "We want to save our homes; they're burning. We need them to save the Fornela Valley; it's a Biosphere Reserve. We've gone 10 days without seeing sunlight, consuming all the ash. They can't abandon us," she cries.

However, in many cases, it was the residents themselves who prevented the fire from razing their homes. Although the main objective of extinguishing fires is to prevent them from reaching the villages and to avoid injuries or deaths, given the situation in El Bierzo, Castile and León, and throughout northern Spain, resources were overwhelmed, and citizens wanted to help despite the recommendation to evacuate their towns. "They wanted to evacuate us, and many residents said no, that we would stay and save the village... And we did. We explained to the firefighters where the fire hydrants were and how best to get there," says Manolo, a resident of Anllarinos, in Páramo del Sil, another area affected by the same fire engulfing the Fornela Valley.

"Who will come now? This is a ruin!"

Specifically, the mayor of Páramo del Sil, Alicia García, claimed that if the Anllares fire had been contained earlier, it would not have led to this disaster. "We understand that the Médulas fire [about 60 kilometers away by road] started on Friday, and the resources were trying to put out that fire. They didn't arrive at the Anllares fire until Monday night. If they had arrived Sunday morning, it would have already been out," said the mayor, who is a forestry engineer.

This is a widespread demand throughout El Bierzo, which has been surrounded by fires on all sides for the past 15 days. An area battered by the closure of mines that looked to a future filled with tourism, which is now vanishing with each hectare razed. Although the Regional Government of Castilla y León assures that the scorched land is being fenced off, the number of scorched hectares could soon exceed 80,000.

Peñalba de Santiago, listed as one of the Most Beautiful Villages in Spain, is another of the evacuated villages that has seen the fire take away the brilliance of the Valley of Silence, in which it is located. In this case, the residents themselves have stayed in their hills to clean and clear the brush to prevent the fire from causing further damage to an area to which the people of Ponferrada hold a special affection. It belongs to the municipality of Ponferrada and is a small oasis near the city. The peaks surrounding it can reach 2,000 meters in height, and it owes its name to its hermitage past. Monks chose it hundreds of years ago as their place of meditation.

But the fire also took away one of the most emblematic and precious jewels of El Bierzo: Las Médulas, a World Heritage Site and one of the most visited places in the area. The world's largest open-pit gold mine, built by the Romans, burned for several days as a result of the Yeres fire. So did its town and surrounding areas, and a place once known for its light has now been tinged with darkness. "Who's coming now? This is a ruin," wonders the owner of one of the restaurants in the town of Médulas.