When wildfire smoke reached Madrid, I realized how close a distant disaster could feel.
After more than a month of relentless heat, the weather forecast finally promised one cool night. We fell asleep with the window wide open.
At 3.00 a.m. I woke up to the acrid air. Our dog Lee was worried, moving from corner to corner and not being able to find a safe place. Kostia was sleeping soundly. I was too tired to get up. So the first couple of minutes I decided to stay in bed and pretend I hadn’t noticed it. Maybe it’ll go away, – I thought.
But in just 5 minutes it was obvious – it wasn’t going anywhere. The burning smell was filling the entire room and I started coughing. Finally I had to get up to close the window.
By then, Spain had already been battling devastating wildfires for more than a week, and some of the largest fires were burning in the Madrid region. I started following the news constantly because the fires were moving in our direction. They were still dozens of kilometres away, but strong winds can carry smoke astonishingly far.
Then in my swimmer’s chat started appearing pictures of the wildfires in the places we went swimming just in June. All those wonderful landscapes with trees and birds were blazing with fire. Someone in the group wrote that ash was falling from the sky where they lived.
One day we even felt the smell, but not that strong and the wind blew it away.
The news showed the small village where we filmed a documentary about a local winemaker. We messaged him – he was ok. And some of the others we knew were ok as well. But not all the vineyards survived.
Lots of people were evacuated.
My friends’ Instagram Stories were full of smoke, fire and already burnt areas. Some living in the north of Madrid were already complaining about the air quality.
A few days later, we were sitting on the terrace of the bar in the centre of Madrid. And that orange-grey haze covered the sky. It looked like a scene out of an apocalyptic film. People around us were murmuring and making photos of that toxic-looking cloud. Oddly enough, it didn’t feel dangerous. It’s so surprisingly shocking that the only desire you have is to continue watching.
I jumped in the subway and hopped off at Anton Martin. The smoke was following me.
When I reached the Atocha station it was already directly overhead.
We live in the south east of Madrid, quite far from the city centre. When I arrived at home, the sky was still clean. I opened the window to enjoy that fresh night air for the first time in so many days. The heat had been unbearable, I was exhausted.
But in the middle of the night the smoke came to our side and covered everything. I was coughing, my dog was suffering. And all my hopes for fresh air ended up in that smell.
The next morning the smell was still there. The sky was a weird orange colour that gave beautiful but frightening light. More reddish than normal golden hour light. It felt as though I was in a Strugatsky novel.
In the middle of the day the wind changed its direction and prevented the two major fire fronts from merging into one devastating blaze. By the next evening, the sky over Madrid was blue again. But the smoke had only disappeared from sight. Hundreds of firefighters were still battling the flames, thousands of people were still displaced, and entire landscapes we had visited only weeks earlier had already turned to ash. Today our swimmers’ group is discussing how we can help restore those places. The answer is frustrating: for now, there’s almost nothing we can do. Nature will need years to recover. New trees need decades to grow. The least we can do is be more careful, and be grateful to the people who spent days and nights fighting the fires.
Every time I open the window now, I find myself wondering what the air will bring. The fire is still burning.
Here Eventually 
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