Santiago de Compostela, May 5, 2025
The president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, reported today that the Xunta will allocate at the 2025-2026 biennium about 1.8 million euros to the training and training of staff of forest fire prevention services in order to guarantee the protection of our mountains for the season “of greater fire risk”.
According to Rueda, these figures represent an increase of almost 19 % of the budget, compared to the previous biennium. With these funds, the forecast is to finance about 3,500 editions of courses and actions “training and training” throughout the aforementioned period.
Thus, it appears in the integrated training plan within the prevention and defense plan against the forest fires of Galicia (Pladiga) corresponding to the year 2025, which today approved the Galego Governor, once the Galicia Forest Council at its meeting last Wednesday, April 30, once heard.
Investment figures in training programs against fire personnel come to consolidate the effort made by the Galician government through the Ministry of Rural Environment in this area in the year 2024. In that annuity 473 editions of courses were given, aimed at 11,447 participants, with more than 108,000 hours of training. In the 2019-2024 period, the total budget dedicated to training was about 2.6 million euros, which allowed to develop 159 courses, with more than 468,810 teaching hours.
Six training programs
The head of the Galician Government stressed that in the face of the coming years, the Training and Training Plan for the Personnel of the Fire Prevention and Defense Service (SPIF) is structured in six programs with “new tools.” First, the Catalog of Monographic Courses, a training program for the period 2025-2028 with the objective of improving the professional qualification of the staff, annually offering a catalog of monographic courses, of different topics related to the prevention and extinction of forest fires, led to obtaining an accrediting diploma of this training. Secondly, a professional training itinerary, which will involve the diversified preparation and by groups of professional categories, which goes from an initial qualification to the specialization of the personnel.
The third program focuses on the training of the Forest Fire Prevention Service (SPIF) and is aimed at improving the organization and efficiency at work. Fourth, a media training section of local entities is established, which implies the basic preparation for personnel assigned to the municipalities that participate in the tasks of extinction of forest fires, as a complement to the courses they can receive from the municipal institution itself.
The fifth program is oriented to “awareness and information actions” for the population, with the aim of informing it of preventive measures, raising it from the duties established in the regulations and advising it on the behavior to follow before forest fires that may take place in their usual places of residence.
The last program, of dissemination, focuses on public awareness activities, mainly aimed at schoolchildren and professional training students, including talks, exhibitions, visits, demonstrations etc.
This formative effort is part of the Play, which aims to reduce as much as possible, taking into account the available resources, the ecological, economic and social consequences produced by forest fires.
Creation of the figure of the Logistics Chief
In addition, among the novelties of this year in the Pladiga, Rueda highlighted the incorporation, within the extinction plan, of a “new figure”, the Logistics Chief. It is a new figure, at the operational level, which will perform technicians or agents in complex fires. Its functions, among others, will be to “facilitate the displacement of the media” in the place of the fire in the location of the areas of action and/or destination indicated in the work instructions, supervise and guarantee the proper functioning of the communications in the fire and manage the supply of the media in coordination with the personnel of the media reception point (PRM) and the district coordination center (CCD).
The Logistics Chief will also be in charge of coordinating with the CCD the management of the accommodation of the spif personnel that will need it and of those other tasks aimed at facilitating the obtaining of material, supplies or the necessary services for the correct performance of the functions of the means operating in the fire.
Rueda said that one more year, the Forest Fire Fighting Device in Galicia will be integrated in total by more than 7,000 people, counting both the professionals of the Xunta and those attached to other administrations. This data is similar to that of the last campaigns. In this context, it is necessary to mention the improvement of the staff reinforcement, with the increase in working time of the dubriven fixed labor personnel, going to act eight months in 2025 and nine months in 2026.
On the material media, Galicia will have about thirty air media against fire, between those of the Xunta de Galicia and those provided by the State. On land there will be about 380 motobombs and heavy vehicles, counting both those of the Xunta and the municipal ones. In addition, we will try to continue with the process of improvement and modernization of the means of prevention and extinction. In this sense, it is necessary to remember that since 2013, 137 Motobombs of the Spif Park were renewed and this year the acquisition of three new units is planned.
Preventive plans in natural parks
As for the so -called control objectives, the line of previous campaigns is also maintained, and thus establish, among others, those that the total burned surface, the burned wooded, the total by fire and the burned by fire are maintained below the average of the last decade. Also, that the total number of fires is below the average of the last ten years (located in the 307), that the fires that exceed 25 hectares are below 2 % of the total and that those of less than 1 ha are more than 70 % of the total.
With respect to the specific objectives, it is necessary to highlight the increase in the surface managed in prevention, given that, according to the president, another of the novelties of the Plaadiga 2025 is the elaboration of “preventive plans” in the six natural parks of Galicia, as areas of singularized action, compatible with the protection of natural heritage with fire prevention.
The PLADIGA update also advances in the development of a tool that allows to know “in advance” the risk of fire to determine the strategic areas in which to design preventive strategies that contribute to reduce the number of fires and burned surfaces, working this year in the territories of Pontevedra and Ourense through the USE4Forest project of the European Interreg-Sudoe program.
PREVENCION, SENSIBILIZACION AND INVESTIGATION
As far as the prevention plan reaches, it will be deepened in the work of creation of firewall areas and auxiliary track belts, in the improvement of forest tracks, in preventive silvicultural treatments and in prescribed burning. In addition, the more than 5,000 water points spread over the Galician territory will be carried out to review and the maintenance of the more than 5,000 water points.
Within this plan, we must highlight the effort made in the sensitization program in educational centers, and more specifically with the publication of the new informative material The Bolechas. The forest fireswith a run of 3,500 copies of the book, 10,000 copies of the notebook and another 10,000 of the didactic unit.
In relation to the detection, deterrence, research and corrective measures plan, the performance in the parishes of high incendiary activity (PAAI) highlights. In 2025, two parishes, those of Requeixo, in the Ourensano City Council of Chandrexa de Queixa, and Pontellas, in the Pontevedrés municipality of O Porriño, are incorporated into the List of the previous year. They leave the list sixteen parishes, with which the total number of Paai in the year 2025 is 26, and 24 of them repeat with respect to the list of last year. Thus, the total figure decreases by 14 with respect to 2024, in which a total of 40 paai were recorded.
