While this summer’s wildfires are somewhat exceptional, they must also be understood within the framework of a “temporality of crisis” (Labrador Méndez) that has characterized the cultural, economic, and ecological landscape of Spain since the financial crisis of 2008. This panel emerges out of a need to address the latest wave of deadly forest fires and extreme heat that have scorched the country since May 2026, while also reckoning with the impact of ecological crisis in Spain writ large. From climate fiction like Estío: once relatos de ficción climática to feature films like O que arde, the Spanish cultural imaginary has increasingly grappled with the fallout of anthropogenic climate change. Bringing together perspectives from cultural studies, the environmental humanities, and sensory studies, the panel's three papers approach these questions through the lenses of fire, water, and smoke. This panel brings together a range of early-career voices—one postdoctoral fellow, one lecturer, and one assistant professor. Each panelist will speak for 15–17 minutes, followed by 15–20 minutes of discussion.

Justin Berner, Assistant Professor of Spanish at Chapman University, will open the panel with “Between the Symbolic and the Real: A Cultural Approach to the Meaning of Fire in a Warming World.” Drawing on this summer’s forest fires in Spain and Europe, as well as two recent Spanish films (Only on Earth by Robin Petré and Fire Will Come by Óliver Laxe), he explores the relationship between the real and the symbolic dimensions of fire. To do so, he engages with the Prometheus complex (the impulse toward intellect) and the Empedocles complex (the impulse toward fiery destruction) as explored in Bachelard’s The Psychoanalysis of Fire, as well as with Freud’s study of the death drive, emphasizing the self-destructive tendencies inherent in anthropogenic climate change. Bringing together psychoanalysis, cultural studies, and environmental humanities, Berner’s talk asks a simple question: what does fire mean today?

Robert A. Myak, Lecturer of Spanish at Binghamton University, will follow with “The Longue Durée of Ecological Crisis in Modern Spain: The Hydropolitics of Aridity and Inundation.” Myak argues that the current frequency of natural disasters contributes to a temporality of crisis while also representing a consequence of the longue durée of Spanish modernity. Building on Antonio Machado’s Campos de Castilla (1912) and Joaquín Costa’s 1911 theorization of a “política hidráulica,” he traces how Spanish hydraulic modernity has redistributed both water and environmental vulnerability across national territory. Myak analyzes three literary manifestations of this hydro-territorial colonization–Miguel Delibes’s “La mortaja” (1957), Jesús López Pacheco’s Central eléctrica (1958), and Julio Llamazares’s Distintas formas de mirar el agua (2015). In doing so, he demonstrates how heat-induced droughts and disastrous flooding emerge as interrelated phenomena, asking what the drowned village might teach the burning country.

Renee Congdon, Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, will close with “‘España huele a humo’: Smoke and its Shifting Olfactory Connotations in Modern Spain.” From Benito Moreno’s 1975 “España huele a pueblo” to Victoria Beckham’s “España huele a ajo,” Spain has long been a country attuned to smell. Employing a sensory studies framework, Congdon explores the scents most commonly associated with Spain in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries before turning to the increasing prevalence of fire-related smells. Placing Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s “Huele a quemado” (1956) into dialogue with media coverage of the 2026 wildfires, she traces how the cultural significance of the smell of smoke has shifted from the mid-twentieth century to the present. As media coverage increasingly foregrounds the smell of Spain’s summer wildfires, Congdon ultimately argues for smoke as an olfactory canary in the coalmine, a culturally encoded indicator of anthropogenic climate change.

If Spain's Mediterranean climate has earned it a reputation as a vacationer's dream, the accelerating pace of global warming now forces a reckoning with that same geography. Reflecting on distinct themes, the panel's three papers converge on a shared question: what does a warming, crisis-stricken world mean for the cultural symbols and imaginaries Spain has long held dear?