What sort of person goes to fight an all devouring forest fire? What courage does it take to face a towering wall of flames; David vs Goliath style?

You may join the Navy, Air Force or Army in times of peace and never fire a shot in anger, but in Infoca, you know you will be going into battle every summer. You know that for all your training, one gust of wind in the wrong direction and the beast you are holding back will turn on you.

But they do it anyway, for a seasonal contract and a miserly salary compared with the municipal, fire services. They stand between you and an entity that will destroy the home which you spent your life’s savings to build in the Spanish countryside. They don’t care what nationality you are nor for which party you vote for; they are the Thin Yellow Line that will protect you.

They are men and women, who struggle in suffocating heat, dressed in coats, trousers and helmets that you and I wouldn’t last 10 minutes in, drinking a beer and enjoying a tapa on a paseo in the heat of August. But that’s not all because they have to struggle along, carrying chainsaws, mattocks, shouldering length of coiled, hose pipes, in the dark, along tracks that goats would shirk at… and they do it for you and your homes; for the rich diversity of Andalusian mountain lands, for the fauna… and when things turn nasty, for each other.

Spare them a thought, when you go to bed tonight because they have the long night before them.

(News: Infoca)