Laurence Dollimore
SPAIN’S Foreign Legion (La Legion) is responsible for at least 10 recent fires in Ronda, a Junta report has found.
It claims the huge forest fire declared last September, near the Las Navetas military outpost, was triggered by explosions of mortar shells during a shooting practice.
The document acknowledges that the blaze erupted during the high risk season and within an area prone to fires, but it also found another twelve breakouts in the same area between 1991 and 2015.
Nine of them, it found, were compatible with the use of military ammunition and another by engines or machines.
In the September fire, investigators believe the firing of a mortar shell sparked a small fire near some dead vegetation, which rapidly spread and went on to destroy more than 45 hectares of land.
The fire started the very same day as the force’s shooting practice.
The Legion is a unit of the Spanish Army and Spain’s Rapid Reaction Force.
Created in 1920, it played a major role for Franco’s Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War.
In post-Franco Spain, the modern Legion has undertaken tours of duty in the Yugoslav Wars, Afghanistan, Iraq and Operation Libre Hidalgo UNIFIL.
