Fire in Xàbia’s Saladar, homes evacuated

Anyone looking towards the Arenal of Xàbia around seven on Tuesday evening saw a column of smoke standing over the Saladar. An hour later there were eight firefighters from Dénia, three forest firefighting units, the roving crew from the Marina Baixa, Proteccio Civil, volunteers from Balcon al Mar, the Policia Local and the Guardia Civil. The paintball centre and several homes had been evacuated as a precaution. By 20.37 the fire was stabilised. This is what happened, and above all what it means for the people who live there.

What happened on Tuesday evening

It started with smoke. Around seven in the evening residents saw a column rising from the Saladar, the low-lying area between the Arenal and the centre of Xàbia. At 19.01 the call reached the fire service. That is fast, and it is down to the fact that this piece of ground does not sit up in the hills but right against the built-up area.

The fire had started on a descampado, a piece of waste ground, next to the Cami de les Moreres. That is a dirt track running to the paintball centre and to a handful of houses. Which is exactly what made this fire more awkward than its size suggests: there were people and homes within a short distance of the flames.

The Consorcio Provincial de Bomberos de Alicante sent eight crew from the Dénia station, with a command unit, a heavy water tender and a heavy forest pump. The roving crew from the Marina Baixa and three forest firefighting units joined them. On the ground they worked alongside Proteccio Civil, the volunteer firefighters of Balcon al Mar and Xàbia’s Policia Local.

The Policia Local and the Guardia Civil evacuated the paintball centre and several nearby homes as a precaution. Precaution is the key word: not because the flames were already reaching the houses, but because nobody wants to wait until they are, least of all with a dirt track as the only way out.

The Red Cross treated one person for smoke inhalation. No other injuries were reported. At 20.37, a little over ninety minutes after the call, the fire service declared the fire stabilised. Shortly before ten the council let residents of calle Atenas know they could open their windows again.

Who all turns up, and why

At a fire like this, six different organisations end up on the same dirt track within half an hour, in as many different uniforms. If you are new here that is baffling. There is a clear division of labour behind it, though, and it is worth knowing before you need it.

The bomberos of the Consorcio Provincial de Alicante are the province’s professional fire service. They come from the nearest station, in this case Dénia, and they lead the firefighting. The command unit that came along is exactly that: the vehicle the operation is run from.

The bombers forestals, the Generalitat’s forest fire service, are a separate outfit specialising in vegetation fires. They work with lighter, more agile equipment, they cut control lines, and they can be flown in by helicopter when ground access fails. At last August’s fire in this same Saladar, that is what happened.

The reten itinerante from the Marina Baixa is a roving crew that drives the region during the risk season and is sent to the nearest incident. That is deliberate: in the summer months there is not only equipment sitting in stations, there is equipment on the move.

Proteccio Civil is the municipal volunteer organisation. They do not fight the fire, they manage everything around it: cordons, diversions, helping people during an evacuation, keeping the route clear so the emergency services can get through. The volunteer firefighters of Balcon al Mar are a local crew from that urbanisation, and they often know the ground better than anyone.

Then the two police forces people here most often confuse. The Policia Local is Xàbia’s municipal police, responsible within the town boundaries, handling traffic and public order around the incident. The Guardia Civil is the national force that operates outside urban centres and which, among other things, investigates the causes of wildfires. That both evacuated on Tuesday makes sense: it moved fast and hands were needed.

Finally the Red Cross, which at incidents like this sets up a post for casualties and for the emergency workers themselves. Treating one person for smoke inhalation on Tuesday is precisely what they are there for.

You do not need to memorise that list. What helps is knowing that one call to 112 sets all of these services in motion at once. The control room decides who comes, not you.

Why the smoke was the real problem

With a fire this size, the flames themselves are rarely what affects people. The smoke is. On Tuesday evening it drifted across the Cami de les Moreres, the very track the fire engines had to use to reach the front. That made the ground approach harder, and beside houses that is the last thing you want.

For residents it translated into the simplest advice there is: keep your windows shut. The council aimed that specifically at calle Atenas, the street closest to the smoke. It sounds like a detail, but it is exactly the right measure. Smoke from burning vegetation carries fine particles that reach deep into the lungs, and indoors with the windows closed the concentration is a good deal lower than outside.

If you want to do better than just closing windows: switch off mechanical ventilation as well, and set air conditioning to recirculate rather than draw fresh air from outside. Many split units in Spanish homes recirculate anyway, but an extractor hood or bathroom fan does pull outside air in. And do not drive past the fire for a look, not only because it obstructs the emergency services but because you end up in a bank of smoke where you can see nothing.

People with asthma, COPD or heart conditions, young children and the elderly notice smoke sooner than everyone else. For those groups, staying indoors when there is a column of smoke nearby is not excessive caution, and neither is waiting for the council to say it is over. On Tuesday that is exactly how it was communicated, with a clear moment when it was fine again.

For the wider picture we wrote earlier about air quality on the Costa Blanca. The short version: measured across the year our air is fairly clean, which is precisely why the spike during a fire stands out.

Stabilised does not mean out

Spanish reporting on fires uses four words, and they mean genuinely different things. Knowing them makes the news a great deal easier to read.

A fire is activo for as long as it spreads uncontrolled. It is estabilizado, stabilised, once crews have halted its advance and are holding the flames within control lines. The fire gains no more ground, but there can still be active patches and hot spots. It is controlado when the entire perimeter is enclosed by a control line: a strip without vegetation, a firebreak or already burnt ground, so the fire cannot escape. And it is only extinguido when crews have established that nothing is still burning anywhere, there are no latent hot spots, no plumes of smoke, and a flare-up is technically impossible.

Xàbia provides the clearest example itself. On 8 August last year this same Saladar burned, near calle Atenas. By around five in the afternoon that fire was stabilised and the aircraft could leave. It was only declared out at seven the next morning. Fourteen hours between stabilised and out, while at five the papers were already reporting with relief that it was under control.

For people living nearby that means something practical. News that a fire is stabilised is good news, not a finish line. Equipment stays on site overnight, damping down continues, and the chance of a flare-up is small but not zero. That is also why the fire service does not leave the moment the flames are gone.

The Saladar, and why it keeps going wrong there

The Saladar is not the kind of place where you expect a wildfire. It lies low, between the Arenal and the centre of Xàbia, and the name refers to the salty ground of an old marsh. What sits there now is a patchwork: waste plots, stands of trees and scrub, dirt tracks, a paintball centre, scattered houses, and along the edges ordinary streets with homes.

That mixture is what makes it difficult. In the hills behind the coast, vegetation can burn without a house being immediately at risk. Here every plot is within a few dozen metres of something that belongs to somebody. So the fire service is not only putting out a fire, it is protecting homes from the first minute, which explains why a relatively small fire drew so much equipment on Tuesday.

On top of that, access is limited. The Cami de les Moreres is a dirt track. One way in, the same way out, and when smoke settles over it you have a problem that has nothing to do with the flames. That is precisely what happened on Tuesday: the smoke hampered getting ground equipment to the front.

Then there is the vegetation itself. After a summer without meaningful rain, everything growing there is bone dry by September. Reeds, dry grass and scrub catch from the smallest spark and burn fast and hot. That is not an Xàbia problem, it holds for the whole coast, but in the Saladar that fuel happens to sit next to residential streets.

Four fires in the same corner

What turns this fire from an incident into a pattern is the repetition. This is the fourth time in two and a half years that this corner of Xàbia has burned, and the street names that come up are always the same.

On 7 May 2024 it burned at the Cami de la Morera. The call came at 17.28, by 19.28 the fire was under control and around two hectares had burned. Three aircraft and two forest firefighting units were involved, and the Policia Local told residents of calle Larissa, Patrai, Atenas and Sparta to stay indoors because of the smoke.

On 10 March 2025 it went wrong again, and this time the cause is known: garden waste. That fire took a full night of work. Four crews, two backhoes and two private water tankers were needed before it was out.

On 8 August 2025 a wooded patch near calle Atenas caught fire, around four in the afternoon. Five crews, two water tenders and three Forestales units turned out, one of them flown in by helicopter. A second aircraft was committed at 16.46. By around five the fire was stabilised, and out at seven the next morning.

And now 15 September 2026. Four times vegetation, four times close to homes, three of the four with calle Atenas in the story. Once is bad luck. Four times in the same area is a fact a council can work with, and it is exactly the argument residents there have been making for a while.

What caused it this time has not been released. That it was garden waste in March last year says nothing about Tuesday. It does say something about how little it takes on a dry plot in late summer.

What the rules say about fire and garden waste

Here it gets concrete for anyone with a garden or a plot. In the Comunitat Valenciana, burning stubble and agricultural or garden waste is prohibited from 1 July to 30 September inclusive. That is not advice and not a guideline, it is a ban, and it runs to the end of this month.

Outside that summer period it is not simply allowed either. Under the 2023 decree you need express authorisation to burn plant waste in the forest influence zone, the strip within five hundred metres of forest land, outside the period from 1 June to 15 October. And even with authorisation there are limits: burning is generally only permitted between sunrise and half past one in the afternoon, and not on Sundays or public holidays.

On top of that the Generalitat sets a preemergencia level when risk is high. At level 3, the highest, there is a blanket ban on fire on forest land and in the influence zone up to five hundred metres. Walking on paths and across country is not allowed, work on or beside forest land is suspended, festive and recreational use of fire is off, sporting events crossing forest land are cancelled, and driving on forest tracks or inside natural parks is prohibited. Every permit issued earlier is suspended on such a day.

What does that mean in practice for an ordinary homeowner? You do not burn prunings and dry grass in September. Full stop. You take it to the ecoparc or you have it collected, and if you are not sure how that works in your municipality you ask at the ayuntamiento. That saves you a fine, and it saves precisely the kind of fire that cost a full night of work in March last year.

And keep your plot clear. A strip of short mown grass around the house, no stacks of cuttings against the wall, no dry growth climbing the fence. That is not panic, it is the difference between a fire that passes your garden and a fire that enters it.

What to do if it happens near you

If you see smoke or flames, call 112. Not the council, not the neighbour, not a quick look first. 112, and that number works in English if you ask for it.

Say four things on that call. Where it is, as precisely as you can: a street name, a kilometre marker, a recognisable building. What is burning: grass, scrub, trees, a building. Which way the smoke is drifting. And whether there are homes or people close by. Those last two determine how much equipment sets off.

If you are asked to leave your house, go straight away. A precautionary evacuation like Tuesday’s at the paintball centre and the houses means the emergency services want room before they need it. Arguing costs time they do not have. Take what you can grab in two minutes: phone and charger, medication, ID and NIE, car keys, a bottle of water, and your pet. The rest is stuff.

Do not park on the access road. This is the most underrated mistake at fires in areas like this. A dirt track with cars parked along both sides is no longer passable for a heavy water tender. If you drive off, drive away from the fire and away from the emergency services, not past them.

If you stay indoors, close windows and doors, switch off ventilation and keep the shutters down. Fill a bath or some buckets with water if you like; that is not excessive when heavy demand is being put on the mains. And follow the council rather than the neighbourhood group chat: at the Xàbia fires, the information about closing windows and opening them again came from the ayuntamiento itself.

Finally, for anyone with a second home who is not here right now: make sure a neighbour or your property manager has a key and your phone number. During an evacuation somebody will want to check whether your house is empty.

And when you are allowed back: walk around the house before you settle in again. Check the terrace, the gutters and the flat roof for embers, because that is how a house still catches after the fire has passed. Then open the place up for an hour to clear the smell of smoke, and rinse garden furniture and the pool before using them again.

If you have damage, however small, photograph it before you clear anything away. A scorched fence or a melted downpipe looks like a detail, but your insurer wants to see the situation as it was. While you are at it, check whether your policy covers vegetation fire on your plot and up to what amount, because on Spanish home policies that is not automatically the same as fire inside the house.

What still has to come

Two things were not known at the time of publication: the cause of the fire and exactly how much ground burned. The council has said it will share that once the operational picture is complete, and the fire service will first have to measure the ground for it.

Stabilised is also not out. That the fire service reported stabilised at 20.37 means the fire stayed within the control lines, not that nothing was still smouldering. At last August’s fire there were fourteen hours between those two moments. So it is entirely possible that crews damped down through Tuesday night and that the all-clear only came on Wednesday.

For the neighbourhood, what matters most is that there were no injuries beyond that one case of smoke inhalation, that the evacuated homes came through, and that the emergency services went from call to stabilised in ninety minutes. That works because somebody called quickly and because a lot of equipment went at once.

We will follow what comes out about the cause and update this article once the council releases figures. For the wider picture of what the coast has seen this season: earlier this month we wrote about the fire beside a school in Dénia, where 230 people were evacuated.

About the authorLeonie

Leonie lives on the Costa Blanca. She writes about daily life on the coast: the markets, the walks and everything you only discover once you actually live here.