My Way: reality was waiting at Muxia

Know that Oz is having a cold winter.
On the other side of the world, Europe is suffering a heatwave. People are quietly dying, serious questions are being asked about preparedness...they have already recognised that the number of days over 40C is rising each year. In the short term they are asking weather predictions give better warnings, getting hospitals ready for a high influx of dehydrated and heat prostrated patients and building special air-conditioned public halls. For the longer term, radical planning stipulations include a choice of solar panels or earth roofing. Not everywhere but that gives a flavour.
The photo was taken yesterday  at the delightful fishing village cum resort of Muxia where the temperature is  only in the high twenties but considered hot by the locals use to a cool wet maritime climate which has more in common with Ireland than sunny Spain.
But this is an area that has seen two huge disasters in the last 20 years.
The on with the biggest world exposure was the mammoth oil spill from the breakup at sea of the tanker 'Prestige' in 1993. It coated the coasts of Spain Portugal and France with a sticky slick. The clean-up is said to have cost €3b and for many years destroyed the coastal fishing industry. Today, it has recovered... and the seafood  is great.

The Prestige broke up at sea. The law courts are still trying to resolve the blame but part of it was that the tanker was blatantly unseaworthy, and none of the effected nations allowed the ailing vessel to enter a port to allow the spill to be properly contained.

And so the clean-up of a thousand kilometres of Coast using hundreds of volunteers from all over Europe was massive and costly. This photo was taken around the same point at Muxia where I took the photo.

But this is not Galacia's only type of disaster. The other is bushfire. Much of the traditional sheep and dairy land has been given over to plantation of eucalyptus hardwood and pine softwood. I was horrified to see the lack of firebeaks and trails and evidence that the countryside was only just recovering from bad fires of ten years ago. The experts are warning but, like the Prestige, the authorities are not taking preventative care. It will only take one hot summer in Galacia before another crisis occurs.

Galacia fire in 2006

The Camino to Muxia and Finisterre winds through a lot of eucalyptus forests

Other provinces are realising that the commercial tree selection is part of the problem and are trying to change where they can to the less combustible and easily managed native trees. But not in Galicia.