Portugal burns more than any other country in the European Union, and the leading cause is arson. The voluntary act of people intentionally setting fires to cause harm is responsible for more than 50% of the land burned in recent years. These numbers give strength to our argument, tell us that there is a problem the country refuses to see. They reveal that there is a story to tell, even when public policymakers have little or nothing to say on the matter.

For one year, we travelled the length of Portugal in search of arsonists. And not wanting to succumb to that city-dweller arrogance so common in a country obcessed with Lisbon and Porto, it must be said that an end of the world atmosphere pervades a large part of the country as you move away from the coasts, or the areas covered in almonds, intensive olive farms and berry greenhouses. It seems like everyone left and that nothing but abandoned fields, abandoned eucalyptus, abandoned houses and abandoned factories remain. Remains. The remains of a country that no longer exists. But with a lot of fire.

In Spain, in 2016 (the last year with consolidated data), just over 69,000 hectares of forest burned. Of these, nearly 14,000 were attributed to arsonists—20% of the total—according to data from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge. In Portugal, in the same year, the numbers were even more stark: nearly 178,000 hectares burned, 30% of which were caused by arson.