Burgohondo to the San Juan reservoir: the fire that crossed from Ávila into the Sierra Oeste
Where did this fire start, and how did it end up west of Madrid?
The fire that did the damage began in Ávila, not in Madrid. It was declared at Burgohondo, in the southern foothills of the Sierra de Gredos, on 22 July at about one o'clock in the afternoon, according to the account carried by eldiario.es. It ran east and south through the Alberche valley and then into the Valle del Tiétar.
The Guardia Civil is investigating the cause. El Español reported on 30 July that investigators believe machinery with tracks was being used to open a forest track for livestock, work that was prohibited at the time because of the fire risk, and that sparks from it started the fire. That is one outlet's account of an open investigation, and no charging decision had been made public.
Madrid's own fires started the following day. One was declared on 23 July after a car caught fire on the M-501 near San Martín de Valdeiglesias, at around kilometre 57. A second broke out at Villa del Prado late the same evening, and a third crossed from Almorox in Toledo province. On 24 July the Comunidad de Madrid merged the three into a single incident it called the Sierra Oeste fire, and in the early hours of that day the national government declared an emergency of national interest covering Madrid, Ávila and Toledo. Spanish coverage described that as the first time the highest national emergency level had been declared with a wildfire as its cause.
What made it dangerous was the geography. The Alberche cuts a continuous corridor of pine and scrub from Gredos down to the reservoirs, with almost no break in the fuel, and a wind shift on the Saturday pushed the Ávila front south towards the Tiétar and towards the Madrid fires. The two fronts met, which was the outcome the emergency services had said they most wanted to avoid.
Is it accurate to call this Spain's largest fire on record?
It is, with a qualification worth understanding before you repeat it.
The claim attaches to the Burgohondo fire in Ávila, and it is a claim about area burned in Spain's national wildfire statistics. The environment minister Sara Aagesen gave the area figures for Ávila, Madrid and Toledo separately from the command post at Navalcarnero, and the president of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, confirmed the region would seek a catastrophe zone declaration. The Spanish cabinet approved a royal decree declaring the burned areas of Ávila, Madrid and Toledo a catastrophe zone.
Two things to be careful about. First, sources differ on what is being measured. Some describe the Ávila fire alone as the record; others describe the combined Ávila, Madrid and Toledo burn as the largest in Spain's history. The two numbers are different, and both have appeared in print under the same headline. Second, satellite estimates from the European Forest Fire Information System and the figures each region officially declares to the environment ministry are compiled differently and do not match exactly, so the final area will be revised.
What is not in dispute is the scale of the human displacement. Close to 90,000 people were evacuated or confined across the two provinces, the great majority of them from Tiétar valley towns in Ávila and from the western fringe of the Comunidad de Madrid. No deaths have been attributed to the Ávila or Sierra Oeste fires in the official accounts published so far, which is remarkable given how fast the fronts moved.
Which towns were cleared, and has everyone gone home?
In Ávila, the evacuations ran the length of the Tiétar valley. Burgohondo and El Hoyo de Pinares were cleared on 24 July. On the Saturday morning seven Tiétar towns were emptied preventively: Piedralaves, La Adrada, Casillas, Sotillo de la Adrada, Santa María del Tiétar, Navahondilla and Casavieja. Mijares, Gavilanes, Fresnedilla, Higuera de las Dueñas and Pedro Bernardo followed later that day. Navaluenga, El Tiemblo and Cebreros were confined rather than evacuated. The Junta de Castilla y León moved several hundred residents out of care homes in the fire's path, a small number of them needing hospital support for oxygen.
On the Madrid side, Aldea del Fresno was evacuated on the night the Villa del Prado fire started, its residents taken to Villamanta. Cadalso de los Vidrios and Cenicientos were evacuated and later stood down, and urbanisations around San Martín de Valdeiglesias and Pelayos de la Presa were cleared as the fire reached the dam.
Returns began on 29 July, when the interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska described the fire as technically stabilised. Confinement was lifted at El Tiemblo and Cebreros, and residents of La Adrada, Gavilanes, Casavieja and other Tiétar towns went home. The Sierra Oeste fire dropped to operational situation 2 on 30 July and the national emergency was stood down.
All of them sit on the slopes immediately above the San Juan reservoir, where crews were still working hot spots. The Comunidad de Madrid authorised all seven to go home in its statement issued on the evening of 4 August. If you have booked a rural house in that specific cluster, check with the owner rather than the booking platform, because being allowed back is not the same as being open for guests.
Were Madrid city and Barajas airport ever affected?
No. This matters because the fire's name in English coverage has usually been "the Madrid fires", which reads as though the capital was involved. It was not. The burn is roughly fifty kilometres west of the city, in the Sierra Oeste and across the provincial line into Ávila.
Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas kept operating normally throughout. Aena reported no flight disruption attributable to the fires, and no airspace closures were imposed over the city. Airport firefighting crews were sent west to help, which is the only real connection between the two.
The city did get the smoke. The council advised people to keep windows shut, avoid outdoor exercise and, for older people, children, pregnant women and anyone with a chronic heart or lung condition, to wear an FFP2 mask outdoors. That was a two-day episode, not a closure of anything. Museums, restaurants, transport and the Prado all ran as usual.
If you are flying into Madrid for a city break, this event does not affect your trip. If you have asthma or a heart condition and a fire flares up again in a westerly wind, the Comunidad de Madrid publishes station-by-station air quality readings and it is worth a look the morning you land.
Which roads reopened, and can you get to the San Juan reservoir?
Roads first, because this is a driving area and the closures were extensive. At the peak the Comunidad de Madrid had more than a dozen numbered regional routes shut or restricted, and the Ávila side lost most of its valley roads too.
The M-501, the road Madrileños call the carretera de los pantanos and the main run out to the reservoirs, was back in normal use by 29 July. The M-957, which runs along the reservoir at San Martín de Valdeiglesias, is the one still cut, from kilometre 0 to kilometre 5.750. The Comunidad de Madrid's incident page still listed that closure when it was read on 16 August, and no authority has announced a reopening, so look before you commit to it. Be aware that the page has not moved since 4 August, so it is evidence that nobody has lifted the closure rather than evidence that it is still there. The national picture reads the other way: the DGT's dashboard of roads cut by fire, generated at 11.25 on 12 August, lists fourteen closures and not one of them is in the Comunidad de Madrid, its entries being in Huelva, Sevilla, Huesca and Zaragoza.
The water is a different matter, and the region is now saying two things at once. The ban on swimming and navigation at the Pantano de San Juan and the Playa del Alberche was announced on 31 July, it runs until further notice, and the emergency incident page still carried it on 16 August, with the Guardia Civil holding the access points. On 8 August, though, Madrid's Dirección General de Salud Pública declared the reservoir water fit for bathing, having sampled the El Muro and Virgen de la Nueva beaches at San Martín de Valdeiglesias and the Playa del Alberche at Aldea del Fresno. That is a verdict on water quality, not an instruction to open the beaches. Telemadrid reports that swimming is in practice available only on a short stretch of shore in the Pelayos de la Presa municipal area, with San Martín de Valdeiglesias keeping its own zones closed because access is still a problem. Boating and the rest of the water sports sit with the Confederación Hidrográfica del Tajo, which has not lifted its own restriction. Regional bus services 541, 545, 546, 547, 548 and 551 suspended their reservoir and Alberche beach stops.
On 1 August the fire reproduced near the reservoir on the San Martín de Valdeiglesias side in the afternoon heat and had to be worked again before it was stabilised that evening. That is why the restriction went on. Downstream, the Confederación Hidrográfica del Tajo put the El Burguillo, Charco del Cura and Picadas dams into its lowest emergency scenario after fire reached them, and reported no significant structural damage.
So: you can drive to the Sierra Oeste. Whether you can swim in it depends on which beach, and the safe move is to ring the town hall of the one you are heading for.
What does a burn this size mean for autumn, and for the Gredos walking routes?
The fire has left a very large burn scar sitting directly upstream of a chain of reservoirs on the Alberche. That is the part of this event that will still matter in October.
Burned ground sheds water instead of absorbing it. The first heavy autumn storms over bare slopes above El Burguillo, Charco del Cura, San Juan and Picadas will move ash, soil and stone downhill fast, into the streams and into the reservoirs. Two consequences follow. Water quality in the reservoirs deteriorates as ash and sediment arrive, which is one reason the recreational restrictions are likely to outlast the fire itself. And the mountain roads and tracks below the burn become genuinely dangerous in a downpour: debris comes off a burned hillside without warning and with no vegetation to slow it. If you are driving the Tiétar or Alberche valleys after a storm, this is the risk to take seriously, more than the fire.
Expect access restrictions to persist. Burned forest is closed for months in Spain, sometimes with fines, because of standing dead trees and unstable ground as much as re-ignition. Castilla y León had already banned open fire, barbecues and fires in recreational areas and campsites across the province during the worst of the heat.
The Valle de Iruelas nature reserve, between Burgohondo and El Tiemblo, took heavy damage. It holds one of Europe's more important black vulture colonies, and the pine and scrub habitat those birds use is what burned. Assume the reserve's trails and its interpretation centre are not a plan for this summer.
The high Gredos routes are a different proposition. The classic circuits from the Plataforma de Gredos up to the Circo and the Laguna Grande sit well to the west and above the burn, and were not in the fire's path. They are also on the far side of the range from the Tiétar towns that were evacuated. The walking that has been lost is the lower, wooded, valley-side kind: the pine tracks above Burgohondo, Navaluenga and El Tiemblo, and the paths around Iruelas. Before you set out, check with the Junta de Castilla y León rather than a route app, because trail databases will not have caught up and a marked path can be legally closed while still showing as open.