Spain battles climate change on several fronts

In a small green meadow in the Gredos mountains, west of Madrid, a couple of dozen cows belonging to Juan Ángel Izquierdo and his family are grazing. The only noise is the gentle clang of the bells around the animals' necks.

This would be an idyllic scene were it not for the blackened pine and oak trees all around, the legacy of a devastating recent wildfire.

"It was immense, I've never seen anything like it," says Izquierdo, whose family have been farming here for 200 years.

The fire, in late July, merged with two others, burning a total of around 80,000 hectares (200,000 acres), making it the biggest blaze Spain has ever registered.

It consumed more than two-thirds of Izquierdo's land and killed 12 of his 85 cows. Another eight animals had to be put down because of their injuries. All the hay he had gathered to feed his cows in the winter was also burned.

"For us farmers, the summers are becoming more and more worrying, because they are getting hotter," he says. "It rains less, the wet season ends earlier and the autumn starts much later."

For farmers, such conditions are synonymous with fires.

"If you don't think about the wildfires too much, you feel okay," Izquierdo says. "But when a fire starts in a nearby village you start wondering – 'and what if we're next?'."

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