'Some have lost it all' - Madrid winemakers devastated by worst ever wildfires

When a neighbor sent a video of the family winery on fire, Juan Diez feared the worst.

A family legacy spanning more than a century would have been lost to the flames if the firefighters hadn't come right on time to save the Bernabeleva Bodegas near the small town of San Martin de Valdeiglesias in the Madrid region.

However, the grapevines were not so lucky, as Diez shows CGTN the damage: scorched vines, burnt olive trees, entire vineyards reduced to ash.

"I'm scared about putting numbers to the financial loss, but it's hundreds of thousands," Diez continues.

Nationally the damage done could be in the hundreds of million of dollars and Spain's total firefighting costs this summer might be more than three billion dollars.

Yet despite the destruction, Diez  counts himself among the more fortunate.

"I have friends in Cebreros and El Tiemblo (nearby towns) who have lost it all. They have smaller operations than mine, but some of them have just 200 plants left, so they cannot make anything now. It's over for them."

Winemaker's grape harvest decimated by wildfire

The winemakers were scrambling to save the harvest anyway, brought forward twenty days because of the record-breaking succession of heatwaves. Losses were expected due to the resulting drought, but then the fires came.

In just four days 77,000 hectares were incinerated across the provinces of Madrid and Avila, famous for historic old-vine Garnacha and Albillo Real grapes. 

Diez traces his plot back over a hundred years when his great grandfather planted the first cuttings.

The news got even worse for winemakers when tons of grapes spared by the flames were smothered by the smoke - so-called smoke taint making them unusable too.

Spain was hit much harder than France this summer as the flames reached the vines, whereas in France it was mostly smoke taint due to the toxic plumes of smoke enveloping the vineyards.

'There is no new normal'

With the United Nations admitting the world is set to pass the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold of global heating, scientists continue to sound the alarm.

New Scientist journalist Michael le Page tells CGTN: "I think what we've seen now is just the start.

"People use this phrase, the new normal, but there's not going to be any new normal. This is only going to get worse and worse and worse over time until we stop emitting greenhouse gasses."

The European continent is heating twice as fast as the global average and Spain at the edge of the continent is on the front lines of the climate crisis.

"These extremes in Europe are actually worse than were projected in terms of climate change and that makes it so difficult for farmers. One year you've got floods, the next year droughts and rivers drying out. So it's extremely hard for farmers to know what to do, what to plant."

But giving up isn't a choice for Diez and so many others.

"This vineyard was planted by my great grandfather 101 years ago," he points to a field full of healthy green-leaf vines,  "and being surrounded by fire, the plants have survived, by miracle."

"I have hope for the future," he goes on.

"Look at these old vines with new green leaves and shoots just a matter of weeks after this great fire. They're trying to survive and I have to be there for them."