Spain Burns

Foundation for Economic Education ^ | Sunday, August 24, 2025 | Nicolás Sánchez

[E. Pluribus Unum]

How restrictions on property rights destroy the land.

Some laws extinguish fires; others ignite them. In Spain, a country that has mastered the art of legislating against reality, we have more of the second kind. Every time private property is violated and individual responsibility is replaced with state imposition, problems multiply. The State tends to cover a bad law with an even worse one, like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.

For decades, the 1957 Forestry Act imposed strict limits on the private management of woodlands. Owning a forest did not mean deciding how to use it: activities were tightly regulated, and uses were subject to administrative supervision. The law’s intended to keep the land as “forest” permanently, shutting the door to any alternative use. The result was property emptied of content, where owners bore the burdens but enjoyed few legitimate benefits.

A large share of forest fires in Spain are deliberately set. The 1957 Act did not automatically prevent burned land from being rezoned or given other uses. Much depended on urban planning discretion and later administrative decisions. In practice, this opened the door to suspicions of intentional fires, since once burned, land could lose its forest value and gain urban or agricultural interest. Each summer, as flames spread across the hills, voices pointed to urban interests lurking behind the smoke. The most infamous case was Terra Mítica, where a fire preceded the rezoning of the land to build the theme park.

No hard proof was needed for the idea to take root in public opinion: fire could be the first step to business. The problem is that for the herd of public opinion and lawmakers alike, the solution was never to confront the root of the problem or...

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TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
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[Lowell1775]

Unintended consequences.

Greed finds a way.

Capitalism, baby. Love it.

If the King doesn’t want the trees cut or burned.....he should buy them and the land upon which they live....or keep his “laws” off them.

[EnderWiggin1970]

Great article. And all too predictable. Need to keep this link handy the next time some climate alarmist claims Spanish fires are caused by “global warming.”

[jerod]

Back in the 1970s in Canada, the main employer of a town would shut down... Then all of sudden ‘wildfires’ (i.e. forest fires) were raging in these same areas for the next couple of summers... People need work and occasionally find creative ways to make that work happen. Same deal with money.