Tubby blokes in orange and blue uniforms
We’ve been watching Spain burn for the past couple of weeks. It must be absolutely terrifying to be close to such huge areas on fire. You only need to think about the heat from a puny municipal bonfire to imagine watching the equivalent of a thousand or two thousand, or however many, of those bonfires race through the treeline towards your town, your village, your farm, your house or your family and animals. My good fortune has been only to see it on TV. Something I noticed, among the reports centring on the firefighters, the Guardia Civil or the crews of the water planes and helicopters, was that there were the occasional references to Civil Protection. Not as heroes on the ground nor as any sort of active participant but nonetheless there, lurking in the background. For instance, when the rail service between Madrid and Galicia was about to be restarted the news channels mentioned that ADIF, the people who look after the rail network, were waiting for the say-so of Protección Civil...