The Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, made an emergency visit yesterday to the Canary Islands where forest fires have raged out of control for nearly a week. More than a third of the pine forests of Gran Canaria have been destroyed by the worst blaze the island has suffered in 50 years, in an unprecedented ecological disaster. In Tenerife, firefighters were struggling yesterday to control a blaze that raged on three fronts. More than 13,000 people have been forced to leave their homes and up to 1,000 were still unable to return yesterday, either because their houses had been destroyed or because essential services had been cut off. "With all the tears I've wept I could have saved my home," said one resident as he contemplated the charred ruins of his house in Mogon, a burnt out village in Gran Canaria.

The fires on both tourist islands, where the holiday season is at its height, were set deliberately. The fire in Tenerife, which started on Tuesday, was "probably provoked", Mr Zapatero said. On Sunday, police in Gran Canaria detained an aggrieved forest warden who confessed he had lit the matches that ignited the fire there on Friday. Juan Antonio Navarro said he started the fire to get his temporary contract as a firefighter extended. Mr Zapatero said he would call his ministers back from holiday for an emergency cabinet meeting tomorrow to approve special aid for those affected. He promised that those responsible for the fires "would receive the full weight of the law".

Smaller fires broke out on La Palma and Gomera, the first time four of the seven Canary Islands have been ablaze at the same time. Firefighters were drafted in from other islands in the archipelago, El Hierro and Fuerteventura, and from Madrid. In mainland Spain, fires swept parched woodlands near Seville, Cordoba and Valencia, whipped by high winds in temperatures of 40C. Many of the fires that devastate Spanish forests every summer are set deliberately, often by firefighters, and mostly in the evening by men who live locally, who then raise the alarm anonymously .

Police in the north-western Galicia region, which suffered huge fire damage last year, launched a pioneering system of psychological profiling of suspected arsonists this week. Suspects will undergo psychological examination to establish the motives and circumstances of their action. The scheme, backed by specialists in Galicia's Legal Medicine Institute, seeks to compile a personality "photofit" of the arsonist. Commentators have been stressing in recent days the importance of prevention in dealing with Spain's annual scourge. "Firefighting starts in the winter," one commentator said yesterday. The test includes a questionnaire, followed up by an interview whose results will be analysed by psychologists. The procedure requires the detainee's consent, and would take place in the presence of a lawyer. The scheme was first adopted in Portugal, whose parched wooded interior has been devastated in recent years by deliberately started forest fires.
(By Elizabeth Nash, The Independent, 02/08/2007)