B2 · Upper Intermediate
12 min
climateenvironmenteuropenatural disasters
France Keeps Burning the Same Forest
Veinte mil personas mirando el humo
Wildfires have returned to Gironde in southwestern France, forcing more than 20,000 people to evacuate. Fletcher and Octavio dig into why this region keeps burning on shorter and shorter cycles, what a massive artificial forest has to do with it, and what it tells us about the future of the European climate.
Los incendios han vuelto a Gironda, en el suroeste de Francia, obligando a evacuar a más de 20.000 personas. Fletcher y Octavio analizan por qué esta región lleva ardiendo en ciclos cada vez más cortos, qué tiene que ver con el bosque artificial más grande de Europa, y qué dice esto sobre el futuro del clima en el Mediterráneo.
5 essential B2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| aridificación | aridification | La aridificación del sur de Europa es una de las consecuencias más graves del cambio climático. |
| cortafuegos | firebreak | Construyeron nuevos cortafuegos para evitar que el incendio se extendiera hacia los viñedos. |
| llevar + gerundio | to have been doing (something) for a period of time | Llevamos horas esperando noticias sobre las familias evacuadas. |
| quema prescrita | prescribed burn / controlled burn | Las quemas prescritas reducen el combustible disponible y ayudan a prevenir incendios más graves. |
| monocultivo | monoculture | El monocultivo de pinos hizo que el incendio se propagara sin ningún obstáculo natural. |
Twenty thousand people evacuated from their homes in Gironde, France.
More than 700 firefighters deployed.
And I'm sitting here thinking, we did this episode.
Not this episode, but I feel like I've watched this film before.
Sí, porque literalmente ya la hemos visto.
Yes, because we literally have seen this film before.
En 2022, Gironda sufrió los peores incendios de su historia moderna.
In 2022, Gironde suffered the worst fires in its modern history.
Más de 26.000 hectáreas destruidas.
More than 26,000 hectares destroyed.
Fue una catástrofe nacional.
It was a national catastrophe.
Y ahora, apenas cuatro años después, volvemos a empezar.
And now, barely four years later, we're starting again.
And four years is nothing.
That's the part that stops me cold.
These forests haven't recovered from 2022, and they're burning again.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y hay algo que mucha gente no sabe sobre este bosque, algo que explica por qué es tan vulnerable.
And there's something most people don't know about this forest, something that explains why it's so vulnerable.
El bosque de las Landas, que cubre gran parte de Gironda, no es un bosque natural.
The Landes forest, which covers much of Gironde, is not a natural forest.
Es una plantación.
It's a plantation.
Un ser humano lo puso ahí.
A human being put it there.
Wait, the whole thing?
I knew it was heavily planted but I didn't realize the scale of what we're talking about.
Es uno de los bosques artificiales más grandes de Europa, casi un millón de hectáreas de pinos marítimos.
It's one of the largest artificial forests in Europe, almost a million hectares of maritime pines.
En el siglo XIX, toda esa zona era una marisma pantanosa, prácticamente imposible de cultivar.
In the 19th century, that whole area was a swampy marshland, practically impossible to farm.
Napoleón III ordenó drenarla y plantar pinos para estabilizar el suelo.
Napoleon III ordered it drained and planted with pines to stabilize the ground.
So it was an infrastructure project, essentially.
You're draining swampland, you plant trees to hold the soil, and a century and a half later you've got a tinderbox.
Eso es.
Exactly.
El pino marítimo es una especie que arde con mucha facilidad.
The maritime pine is a species that burns very easily.
Y cuando plansas un millón de hectáreas del mismo árbol, sin apenas diversidad, creas las condiciones perfectas para que un fuego se extienda kilómetros sin encontrar ningún obstáculo natural.
And when you plant a million hectares of the same tree, with almost no diversity, you create perfect conditions for a fire to spread for kilometers without finding any natural barrier.
It's a monoculture problem.
Which, you know, I've written about this in agriculture, but I hadn't connected it to forestry in quite this way.
Los expertos llevan décadas diciéndolo.
Experts have been saying it for decades.
Pero ahora hay un segundo factor que hace todo mucho más grave: el clima.
But now there's a second factor that makes everything much more serious: the climate.
El suroeste de Francia se está calentando más rápido que la media europea.
The southwest of France is warming faster than the European average.
Los veranos son más secos, los suelos retienen menos agua, y los períodos de sequía son más largos.
Summers are drier, soils retain less water, and drought periods are longer.
And when you combine a structurally flammable forest with a drier, hotter climate, you don't get occasional bad years.
You get this.
You get a cycle.
Hay estudios que muestran que la región mediterránea en general está experimentando lo que los climatólogos llaman una "aridificación": no solo menos lluvia, sino una transformación estructural del clima.
There are studies showing that the Mediterranean region as a whole is experiencing what climatologists call 'aridification': not just less rain, but a structural transformation of the climate.
El suelo pierde su capacidad de recuperarse entre temporadas.
The soil loses its ability to recover between seasons.
Which is different from a drought.
A drought ends.
Aridification, if I'm understanding correctly, is more like the baseline shifting permanently.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y lo que hace que esto sea tan difícil políticamente es que los cambios son graduales.
And what makes this so politically difficult is that the changes are gradual.
Nadie puede señalar un año concreto y decir: "aquí comenzó el desastre." Pero si comparas el suroeste de Francia de 1980 con el de 2026, estás hablando de dos climas completamente distintos.
Nobody can point to a specific year and say: 'this is where the disaster began.' But if you compare the southwest of France in 1980 with 2026, you're talking about two completely different climates.
Let me bring it back to the human scale for a second.
Twenty thousand people evacuated.
That's not a statistic, that's a small city.
People grabbing what they can, getting their animals out, not knowing if there'll be a house to come back to.
Y mucha de esa gente ya lo vivió en 2022.
And many of those people already lived through it in 2022.
Hay familias que han sido evacuadas dos veces en cuatro años.
There are families who have been evacuated twice in four years.
Imagínate reconstruir tu vida, replantando tu jardín, y cuatro años después vuelves a ver el humo en el horizonte.
Imagine rebuilding your life, replanting your garden, and four years later you see the smoke on the horizon again.
At what point does the calculus change and people just stop going back?
Because I've watched that happen in California.
People rebuilding after fire after fire, and then one year they don't.
Eso también está pasando en Europa, aunque de forma más lenta.
That's happening in Europe too, though more slowly.
Y hay un factor que lo acelera enormemente: los seguros.
And there's one factor that's accelerating it enormously: insurance.
Las compañías de seguros están empezando a retirarse de las zonas de alto riesgo.
Insurance companies are starting to pull out of high-risk areas.
Sin seguro, muchas familias no pueden permitirse reconstruir.
Without insurance, many families can't afford to rebuild.
That's the quiet crisis under the visible crisis.
The fire makes the news.
The insurance withdrawal happens in letters nobody reads until they need them.
Y no es solo un problema francés.
And it's not just a French problem.
En España, sobre todo en Galicia y en la Comunidad Valenciana, llevamos años discutiendo exactamente lo mismo.
In Spain, especially in Galicia and the Valencia region, we've been discussing exactly this for years.
Los seguros, la gestión forestal, quién es responsable cuando el fuego destruye una casa que está al borde del monte.
Insurance, forest management, who is responsible when fire destroys a house on the edge of the woodland.
Spain has had its share of catastrophic fire years.
Valencia in particular, I remember covering the aftermath of the 2012 fires, and the scale of what burned was almost incomprehensible.
Y en Galicia el problema tiene una dimensión adicional: hay incendios provocados intencionalmente, por especulación inmobiliaria o por conflictos relacionados con el uso de la tierra.
And in Galicia the problem has an additional dimension: there are deliberately set fires, for real estate speculation or conflicts related to land use.
Lo que hace muy difícil separar las causas climáticas de las causas humanas directas.
Which makes it very difficult to separate climate causes from direct human causes.
Right.
And that complexity matters because the solutions are completely different depending on which cause you're dealing with.
Forest management, prescribed burns, land-use law, criminal prosecution.
These are not the same toolbox.
Hay un debate muy interesante en Francia y en España sobre las quemas prescritas, que es básicamente quemar de forma controlada partes del bosque para reducir el combustible disponible.
There's a very interesting debate in France and Spain about prescribed burns, which is basically burning parts of the forest in a controlled way to reduce available fuel.
Es una técnica que los pueblos indígenas de Australia y América del Norte han usado durante siglos.
It's a technique that indigenous peoples of Australia and North America have used for centuries.
And western forest management spent decades suppressing that knowledge.
There's a painful irony there.
The US Forest Service spent the better part of the 20th century putting out every fire it could find, and in doing so created decades' worth of accumulated fuel.
Es exactamente el mismo error.
It's exactly the same mistake.
Y en Francia el debate sobre las quemas controladas es políticamente complicado porque hay una parte de la opinión pública que no acepta la idea de que hay que quemar el bosque para salvarlo.
And in France the debate about controlled burns is politically complicated because part of public opinion doesn't accept the idea that you have to burn the forest to save it.
Suena a paradoja, y la gente desconfía de las paradojas.
It sounds like a paradox, and people distrust paradoxes.
Though I'd argue a paradox you manage is better than a catastrophe you don't.
What's the French government's current position on this?
Are they moving toward accepting prescribed burns as policy?
Están avanzando, pero despacio.
They're moving forward, but slowly.
Después de 2022 hubo mucha conversación sobre reformar la gestión forestal, crear más cortafuegos, diversificar las especies.
After 2022 there was a lot of conversation about reforming forest management, creating more firebreaks, diversifying species.
Algunos de esos proyectos están en marcha.
Some of those projects are underway.
Pero toma décadas reemplazar un bosque de pinos con uno más diverso y resistente.
But it takes decades to replace a pine forest with a more diverse and resilient one.
And in the meantime it keeps burning.
There's also a European dimension here, isn't there?
CENTCOM deploying 700 firefighters is one thing, but France has called on EU civil protection resources before.
Sí, el mecanismo europeo de protección civil existe precisamente para esto.
Yes, the European civil protection mechanism exists precisely for this.
Cuando un país no tiene suficientes medios, puede pedir ayuda y otros estados miembros envían aviones, personal, equipos.
When a country doesn't have enough resources, it can ask for help and other member states send planes, personnel, equipment.
Funciona razonablemente bien, aunque siempre hay tensión cuando varios países necesitan ayuda al mismo tiempo.
It works reasonably well, although there's always tension when several countries need help at the same time.
Which happens more and more, because the fire seasons are no longer national events.
Greece is burning, Portugal is burning, France is burning, and they're all pulling from the same European pool of Canadair aircraft.
Y eso plantea una pregunta que me parece fundamental: ¿tiene Europa suficiente capacidad para responder a un verano en el que los grandes incendios ocurren simultáneamente en cinco países?
And that raises a question I find fundamental: does Europe have enough capacity to respond to a summer in which major fires occur simultaneously in five countries?
La respuesta honesta, ahora mismo, es que probablemente no.
The honest answer, right now, is probably not.
That's a significant admission.
And it suggests that the adaptation conversation, the one about living with more fire rather than just trying to suppress it, is one Europe hasn't fully started yet.
No, no la ha empezado.
No, it hasn't.
Y hay otro tema que me parece urgente y que casi nadie menciona: Gironda no es solo pinos.
And there's another topic I find urgent and that almost nobody mentions: Gironde is not just pines.
Es también Burdeos.
It's also Bordeaux.
Burdeos está en Gironda.
Bordeaux is in Gironde.
El viñedo más famoso del mundo está literalmente rodeado por el bosque que está ardiendo.
The most famous wine region in the world is literally surrounded by the forest that's burning.
Now that gets Octavio's attention.
Though seriously, I hadn't made that connection.
The Médoc, Pomerol, Saint-Émilion, they're all in that same department.
Y el vino de Burdeos ya está sufriendo el cambio climático de otra manera: las temperaturas más altas están cambiando el perfil de los vinos, aumentando el nivel de alcohol, alterando los tiempos de vendimia.
And Bordeaux wine is already suffering from climate change in another way: higher temperatures are changing the wine profiles, raising alcohol levels, altering harvest timing.
Ahora añade el riesgo directo del humo y del fuego.
Now add the direct risk of smoke and fire.
Es una crisis dentro de una crisis.
It's a crisis within a crisis.
Smoke taint is a real thing, I know that from California winemakers.
When smoke hangs over a vineyard during ripening, it gets into the grapes in ways that are very hard to remove.
Some vintages got wiped out completely.
Y si eso empieza a ocurrir en Burdeos de forma regular, el impacto económico y cultural sería enorme.
And if that starts happening in Bordeaux regularly, the economic and cultural impact would be enormous.
Estamos hablando de una región cuya identidad está completamente ligada a ese vino, a esa tierra, a ese paisaje.
We're talking about a region whose identity is completely tied to that wine, to that land, to that landscape.
Perderlo no es solo una pérdida económica.
Losing it is not just an economic loss.
It's a grief, actually.
Which is something the climate conversation rarely makes room for.
The numbers are so big that the specific, irreplaceable losses get lost inside them.
Anyway.
Something you said earlier caught me, linguistically.
¿Qué dije?
What did I say?
Siempre me pones nervioso cuando dices eso.
You always make me nervous when you say that.
You said 'llevan años discutiendo exactamente lo mismo' about Spain.
And I know 'llevan' must relate to time somehow, but I'd have said 'they have spent years discussing.' The construction felt different.
Buena observación.
Good observation.
"Llevar" más un gerundio describe una acción que empezó en el pasado y que todavía continúa ahora mismo.
'Llevar' plus a gerund describes an action that started in the past and is still continuing right now.
"Llevan años discutiendo" significa que la discusión empezó hace años y sigue activa hoy.
'Llevan años discutiendo' means the discussion started years ago and is still active today.
Es diferente al pretérito perfecto porque enfatiza la continuidad.
It's different from the present perfect because it emphasizes the continuity.
So 'llevan semanas ardiendo' would be 'they've been burning for weeks' with that sense of it still happening right now, not just that it happened.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y fíjate que en inglés dices "they have been burning" con el present perfect continuous, que también expresa continuidad.
And notice that in English you say 'they have been burning' with the present perfect continuous, which also expresses continuity.
Es la construcción más cercana.
It's the closest construction.
En español, "llevar" más gerundio hace el mismo trabajo, pero de una forma más compacta y natural en la conversación.
In Spanish, 'llevar' plus gerund does the same job, but in a more compact and natural way in conversation.
So if I wanted to say I've been learning Spanish for three years, I could say 'llevo tres años aprendiendo español.' Which is also, frankly, a depressing sentence given how little progress I've made.
Llevas tres años aprendiendo español y todavía le dices a la gente que estás embarazado.
You've been learning Spanish for three years and you still tell people you're pregnant.
Pero sí, la frase es perfecta.
But yes, the sentence is perfect.
Perfecta gramáticamente, al menos.
Perfect grammatically, at least.