The PSOE's curious shift in discourse on the fire and its silence on the arsonists

Many readers of this blog were very young, and some were not even born, when Galicia suffered a severe wave of fires in 2006.

Pedro Sánchez avoids criticism of the fires with a crude smokescreen
The effects of a weak government: Spain reduces its aerial firefighting resources

According to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), 92,000 hectares burned in Galicia in 2006. Unlike what is happening now, that year the most affected provinces were La Coruña (43,000 ha) and Pontevedra (40,000 ha), with 7,000 ha burned in Orense and 1,000 ha in Lugo. At that time, the PSOE and the BNG governed in coalition in Galicia, after the Popular Party won the 2005 Galician elections but by a simple majority.

As I reported at the time, the wave of fires gave way to a wave of lies from the regional coalition government to cover up its responsibility for what happened, especially the regional government's delay in responding to the crisis. A curious fact about that wave of fires is that no one spoke of "climate change", which is the socialist Pedro Sánchez's explanation for the current wave of fires. Not even environmentalists attributed the 2006 wave of fires to that cause, as can be seen in the report published by Ecologists in Action that same year on that environmental disaster.

As shown in a news article published by the newspaper El Mundo on August 18, 2006, the PSOE-BNG regional government pointed from day one to a "criminal arson activity that seeks to cause as much damage as possible". On August 8, four days after the start of this serious wave of fires, the socialist Cristina Narbona, then Minister of the Environment, spoke of "forest terrorism" and accused "people with spiteful attitudes for not having been hired for this year's fires", without providing a single piece of evidence.

On August 10, 2006, six days after the start of that wave of fires, the Xunta said that it was "a clear provocation to this Government". On August 11, along the same lines, the socialist Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, then Minister of the Interior, said that the fires were "planned with very bad intentions" and were "strategic". "Whoever starts them knows where to do them and how to cause damage," he added. On August 12, the then Attorney General of the State, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, said that "it is a catastrophe in which there are undoubted criminal indications" and announced an investigation into the matter. Curiously, the Police and the Civil Guard ruled out a criminal plot, but the PSOE ignored it.

On August 20, 2006, the Nunca Máis platform, controlled by the BNG, called a protest in Santiago blaming "arson terrorism" and chanting the slogan "Popular Party, environmental terrorism", without providing a single piece of evidence to support the accusation. Paradoxically, since August 15, 2006, it was known that one of those arrested for the arsons had been a PSOE candidate in 1999 in the municipality of Forcarey (Pontevedra). Finally, on May 8, 2007, the Prosecutor's Office of the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia (TSJG) published a report stating (page 279):

"No evidence was found to suggest that behind all the fires that occurred this summer, and especially those that occurred during the first days of August, there was planning and coordination between the perpetrators that could establish the existence of an organized plot."

It's curious to see the change in the PSOE's discourse in 19 years. As of today, there are already 32 people arrested and 93 under investigation for this wave of fires, but the Sánchez government no longer mentions the arsonists, much less the possible existence of criminal plots, as it claimed 19 years ago. This silence is even more curious when we consider that in May the government spread hoaxes attributing the April 28 blackout to an attack and the railway chaos to sabotage, without offering a single piece of evidence or clue in this regard.

The problem for the left is that in 2006 it fueled the "criminal plot" hoax in an attempt to blame the PP for the fires, in a more or less veiled way, presenting the ecological disaster as a provocation to the government. Now, with a PP regional government in Galicia, is the PSOE afraid that its hoaxes from that time will turn against it if the arsonists are mentioned? This is what happens when you fuel conspiracy theories without any foundation and in an irresponsible manner: when these theories don't suit you, it becomes complicated to defuse them after having fueled them from a position of power.

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Photo: Elentir. A cow that survived a fire at Alto de la Grova in Bayonne (Pontevedra) on August 10, 2006, with its skin charred and grazed by burning branches. Several animals were caught in the flames and charred in what was one of the worst waves of forest fires to hit Galicia.