Something has changed as a result of the Mediterranean wildfires this summer, from Turkiye to Greece, from France to Spain. These are no longer sporadic dry spells or extreme seasons. A climatic and social logic that is fundamental to the foundation of global disaster capitalism contributes to the so-called sixth-generation fires.
The size is incredible. By the time of the summer of 2025, more than one million hectares (3, 860 square miles) had burned across the European Union, four times the average over the previous two decades. In just a few weeks, Spain saw the largest area burned this century, with fire-related emissions reaching the highest annual total in the record since 2003, rising from 40, 000 to 416, 000 hectares (155 to 1, 606 square miles). At least eight people have lost their lives, including firefighters and volunteers, as a result of the fires, which have forced tens of thousands of people to flee. The rail link between Madrid and Galicia, among others, was damaged. The impact of heat itself is just as severe as the flames: According to the Spanish National Research Council’s MACE system, nearly 16 000 people died from heat this summer, or 6, 000 more than just two weeks prior, according to the MACE system’s report from August 22.
These fires are neither a “natural” phenomenon nor an isolated one. They are the result of a combustion system that has been exacerbated by our socioeconomic order’s climate change and worsened by land-use policies that prioritize accumulation over growth. Many institutions have cut resources so drastically that investment in fire prevention and firefighting has been halved over the past 13 years, rather than putting prevention and care first. Add to this a persistent disregard for rural areas and a land-use strategy influenced by corporate and financial interests, with the focus on tourism’s potential gain at the expense of long-term survival.
The landscape has been reshaped by the expansive inertia of capital, which prices everything and prioritizes care and prevention over profit. It has severed community bonds and damaged local agriculture in favor of predatory agroindustry, and it has created monocultures, urban sprawl, and inhospitable environments. Wildfires are no longer accidents in this context. They are steadfast supporters of a social order that is “automatic subject,” relentless, unstoppable, and pushing ecosystems, labor, and life itself to the limit.
Their effects also reflect the fundamental nature of our societies’ unequal exchange, both economic and ecological. The most prone to the flames are those who work, rural, immigrate, and hail from depopulated areas. The threat is distributed across the gaps between geography, class, race, and gender. And the people who are consistently deemed “disposable” are consistently the same.
In a large portion of the Mediterranean, fire is becoming more swift, unpredictable, and difficult to control. Heat and drought are teetering with increasingly flammable landscapes, creating a “new climate normal.” Without any remaining adaptive margin, forests turn into ticking time bombs: monocultures grow alongside rural abandonment, biomass accumulates unchecked, and institutions are overburdened.
Meanwhile, public discourse veers off in erratic directions. There are too many forests, according to Catalonia’s president, Salvador Illa, just a few weeks ago. The last thing we need is less forest cover in a region like the Mediterranean, where the sea itself is boiling and extreme events like fires, droughts, and flash floods are getting worse. Forest ecosystems that are severely damaged also have important roles. They capture carbon, cool their surroundings with low albedo, and stabilize their environment with high ecological multifunctionality.
The best way to move forward is to forge a management that evaluates forests’ architecture, preserves and promotes biodiversity, reduces accumulated biomass without erode soils, and, most importantly, restores the connection between community and territory. This is necessary to rebalance the city-country divide, where the countryside has become essentially a dump site for urban waste and a source of goods. Ecosocial investment and planning that transcends short-termism is what is required.
Resistance is increasing, despite systemic combustion. Communities engaged in agroecology (sustainable farming based on ecological principles and social justice), people defending their territories from the Amazon to Palestine, and climate justice movements that explore alternative ways of residing in the world. These encounters demonstrate that the order in which forests are ignited also burns. They demand policies that address segregation, extreme inequality, and re-center life in our regions and pledge to emancipation in general.
Summer fires will start earlier and burn fiercer because accumulation, exploitation, and dispossession will continue to rule our social and ecological relations. Wildfires are evolving in tandem with the fueling system. We must place life at the center if we don’t want this to become a daily reality. The path to care, meaning, and a future is the one we need. Without social and environmental justice, there won’t be a fire without disaster.
