“It’s gone,” Catarina said, her voice hollow.
June had been cruel. A merciless sun had bleached the ground white, and the estio —the dry season—had arrived early. The creeks were beds of cracked mud. The wind, usually a gentle Atlantic breeze, had turned into a hot, dry leste from Spain, breathing fire into the land. incêndios em portugal
Joaquim picked up a piece of melted glass that had once been a window. “The forest is a phoenix,” he said quietly. “It burns, and it comes back. But the people… the people are not eucalyptus.” “It’s gone,” Catarina said, her voice hollow
But out of the ash, a new story began.
On the afternoon of June 17th, 2017, Joaquim was mending a fence. He paused, sniffing the air. Something was wrong. The birds had gone silent. Then, he saw it: a column of smoke rising from the valley near Pedrógão Grande, about forty kilometers away. It wasn't the grey, lazy smoke of a controlled burn. It was black, oily, and it was growing sideways, pushed by the demonic wind. The creeks were beds of cracked mud