Putting out the economic fires was a campaign to be able to return to the summer fires financially alive. Forest firefighters of private companies granted by the Junta de Castilla y León (PP) were left to receive letters of undress after the worst call-out season in the history of the community: five deaths (of firefighters) and the destruction of more than 150 thousand hectares. Those affected, about 2,000 of the unit’s 5,000 members, take power and await new contracts in 2026, keeping the monetary and labor pulse as best they can: many student opposition, governmental or independent, seeking stability; Others take temporary jobs to cover the Sepe Service (Servicio Público de Empleo Estatal) and some get a direct break because they left a medical job, and they left in August. So years. The sector requires a complete annual process to implement better preventive measures, annually in the summer, and training to the maximum extent.
Alejandro García, 25, keeps his diaries, booklets, rugs, pens and subtools in the library of a León university. García is studying how to become a firefighter: today he tackles the regulations of Ley de Montes and takes an interest in the surrounding mountains and forests of Castilla y León. This worker has just terminated his contractual relationship with the private company after his second campaign between calls and is now returning to the keys of the office: the gym and the empollar. He is a senior technician in the forest department. He aspires to be approved to oppose the forest agent to the authority, but there is still no invitation to the previous invitation and he cannot present himself because he has not completed his degree. Now there is an exercise in stability and structural revolutions in the long school days: “Ojalá we will have contracts every year and for the end of a good and orderly life, and without knowing whether we will call you to work next summer.”
This lack of balance at work is also known to Leoni José Luis Fernández Campano, who spent 26 of his 56 years working temporarily in the fire watch department of Manzaneda de Torrio (León), where he was alerted this summer to the outbreak. Campano recreates The Silver Wedding surrounded by summer humor and the classic fragility of the group, now doomed to fear until they return to the heat. He also works for a performance agency that organizes celebrations in cities like the Lion Rock Fest in Lyon, where he organizes these days so everyone can attend. Before he devotes his sinless months to bricks so that the buzz burns too; In other years he devoted himself to the care of his deceased mother and the resin which occupied him for some time, but in the meantime he did not further his forestry career. “Since October 16, I have been in pain,” he says. In other years he called him again on April 16, but he trusts the junta’s promises to bring stability to most professionals, although he knows nothing at the moment. Campano comments that security guards were employed for months, but now, in times of danger, they only have access to work and are assigned to operational tasks such as securing roads where the movement of vehicles – private because they are not used for transport – is often slowed down: “There is a lot of work to do but nothing is done.” From the background, the advisor of Medio Ambiente, Juan Carlos Suárez Quiñones, has been criticized both last summer and for the promises of the junta: a process has been announced that is “completely public” within three years, but in the negotiations it refers to “of a public nature”, they are contracting with public companies on worse terms than the autonomous brigades.
“My life is full of uncertainty,” comments the guard. Among the juice won by the junta, he says, because he did not campaign miramentos after 17 successive campaigns, and in another case achieved that he paid for three years he denied: “Now they will complain that after 2022 they promised that in 2025 we will all be appointed, and none of this, vas al juzgado o si no nada.” “I’m not ready for a good Christmas, but my idea is a Christmas on the mountain, I have a lot of money and here I’ve seen everything and spent everything,” sighs Campano, with costs barely exceeding 1,200 euros a month. He also had Javier Galan control the phone from the horizontal position of the sofa on the same day he got his end of the contract. “He arrived before the name,” he points out, while waiting to be operated on for an inguinal hernia that tormented him in the summer and tried to control his faja, as he saw in El País burning, “in order to help and not to take him away from the people, from the company and from his personal conviction.”
The 42-year-old man had to go to the Social Security emergency department because his company employee denied him a work-related illness. “I’m sick for common emergencies, and I’m 70 percent duty-bound, at sea, one hand behind us and behind us,” says Galland, who will eventually start work in March in his helicopter transport unit doing preventive work. “I could go to a forestry company with a partner, and my idea was to take a month off, rest and work on something related to the mountain so as not to miss the train, if he leaves the mountain he notices a lot,” explains the firefighter, highlighting the importance of working in wood with machines or doing debrosadora work with motorcycles or machines. Other fellow students devote themselves to the installation or colmenas: “If we do not have annual contracts, we are looking for life; if you are not in the process, it is important to maintain contact with the mountain and put in physical and training effort.”
EL PAÍS contacted a brigadista who supports these lines: they or their colleagues are involved in transitional work or studying the opposition. One is training as a rescuer, another takes care of livestock in his village, another wears hats… A worker in Vallesoletano asks to remain anonymous, because he fears the arbitrators will punish those who protest, after he made his debut this year in the group aged 24 years. He enjoyed it and considered continuing until he “made a course that served no purpose” and sent her for 10 days to the fire at Mombeltran (Avila) “without having ever seen a fire.” He added: “I have to be there so they can call me back. There is no job grant, and if I find work it will be temporary.” The young man has been studying at home to oppose the independent and extinct Buon de Montes, but he does not know when the next contest will be; Now, he knows that his service will be terminated because his buddy will be running his yard but he has not received any official letter.