The northern part of Tres Cantos woke up silent this Tuesday. The fear unleashed yesterday, Monday, as a result of the flames that devoured part of the municipality, has given way to a shock shared by many affected. Its meadows and fields have transformed into a blackish tapestry as far as the eye can see, with remains of smoldering ash.

And in the midst of this disaster, a horse ranch stands as the epicenter of the tragedy. It's midday and a thick smell won't dissipate. The wind carries a scent that mixes smoke, burnt wood, and, above all, the charred flesh of the animals.

Inside this enclosure, a fire yesterday claimed the life of a 50-year-old Romanian. He was a friend of the farm owners, a mechanic by profession, and helped them repair their vehicles. Just yesterday, he was in charge of tuning up one of the tractors. When he finished, he got in his car and headed home, in Tres Cantos itself. But before he could park, he saw the fire. Without thinking twice, he turned around and returned to the farm to"help with the horses."

At one point, the victim tried to help one of the ranch owners who was in trouble. And, as he was approaching him,"a ball of fire engulfed him" without warning."The ambulances didn't come... Neither did the 112 helicopter. We had him burned on the ground for more than two hours. They say he was 98% burned, but I was right in front of him and he was 100% burned," says the farm manager.

He, along with the help of others, managed to remove a horse separator from inside a truck to use it as an improvised stretcher. They laid the Romanian mechanic down there and, as best they could, lifted him to an area where"a Civil Guard helicopter, one of those that issues tickets, was able to dock him inside to evacuate him to La Paz." He would die a few hours later in the Burns Unit.

There was another injured person, the 83-year-old owner of the ranch, although this Tuesday morning he was discharged from the hospital."He suffered burns on his arms, right ear and forehead. He had swallowed a lot of smoke... Since he has a stent in his heart and felt a lot of pressure in his chest, he was sent to the hospital," said another of the workers.

Tragedy among animals

Pepín Marín, the manager of this farm, couldn't believe his eyes this Tuesday morning. His whole life has been on these lands. He makes his way through the rubble of demolished fences and infrastructure. He leans over the remains of a completely charred horse. It's Peregrino. He can't hold back his tears.

He's watched him grow up, as he was one of the five horses he owned on this plot of land. In the sand, half-buried, he finds one of the horseshoes. He touches it, but it burns. And the crying intensifies. Even more so when he glimpses, less than a meter away, Hidalgo, another of his charred horses. He can barely utter a word.

"The fire was so fast... It spread in tenths of a second," he notes. There were 27 horses on the ranch. Pepín says they did everything they could to get them out, opening the doors to their stable,"but they were so scared by the smoke that they wouldn't move." And they all died.

The fire completely cornered this horse ranch. Besieged, like at El Álamo, they could only wait for the emergency services to act."I was scared, yes, but I was more scared for the horses. My priority was to save them. Because my car was also burning, and I didn't care," recalls Pepín, who last week was offered 60,000 euros for one of his equines :"And there you have it, completely scorched."

While they hope someone will quickly remove the remains of the dead animals to prevent the creation of a "hotbed of infection," some recalled how last year, around this time, there were three other fires"in this area," one of which was 200 meters from the ranch. Luckily, last summer there wasn't the wind that, unfortunately, there was yesterday. And that left a desolate scene with an even crueler background:"This was also our job, and we've been left without it. We've lost everything."