{"id":593263,"date":"2026-08-14T17:59:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T17:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/593263\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T17:59:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T17:59:17","slug":"bones-of-medieval-kings-saved-from-spanish-wildfire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/593263\/","title":{"rendered":"Bones of medieval kings saved from Spanish wildfire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Firefighters raced to save a mythical 1,000-year-old monastery in northeastern Spain as a growing wildfire<\/a> prompted the hasty removal of the bones of the medieval monarchs buried there.<\/p>\n

The blaze broke out earlier this week and yesterday bore down on two monasteries of San Juan de la Pe\u00f1a, a symbol of the Aragon region, perched in mountainous, rugged terrain.<\/p>\n

The oldest monastery, linked by legend to the Holy Grail, has origins in the 10th century and holds the remains of the first kings of the medieval kingdom of Aragon.<\/p>\n

The army’s emergencies unit (UME) released footage of its officers rushing to remove the monastery’s priceless treasures yesterday, including transparent boxes full of skulls and bones, artwork and a chalice, as flames licked the surrounding hills.<\/p>\n

\"Thick
\nThick plumes of smoke caused by a wildfire in Aragon, Spain<\/p>\n

“At the last minute, we were able to rescue assets with an extraordinary historical value for this region and for all of Spain,” UME chief Javier Marcos told reporters.<\/p>\n

“I’m not confident about how the fire will develop, for that reason we still have personnel defending both monasteries,” he said.<\/p>\n

The heritage site lies close to one of the world-famous Saint James pilgrimage routes to the northwestern city of Santiago de Compostela and attracts around 100,000 visitors a year.<\/p>\n

Felix Longas, a member of a religious brotherhood that cares for the monastery, told public broadcaster RTVE that the site “has an incalculable symbolic value”.<\/p>\n

“It’s our roots, our history lies there,” he explained, saying a change in wind helped keep the flames at bay.<\/p>\n

Ideal conditions for wildfires<\/p>\n

Regional authorities said more than 10,000 hectares (24,000 acres) had been “affected” and around 850 people evacuated from various small settlements and villages.<\/p>\n

Aragon’s leader Jorge Azcon did not rule out more evacuations and said three firefighting aircraft could arrive from France, to reinforce the roughly 500 officers already tackling the blaze.<\/p>\n

A series of heatwaves across Europe have created ideal conditions for wildfires, with Spain suffering its biggest such disaster in recent history in late July, just dozens of kilometres from Madrid.<\/p>\n

The Aragon region is under the second-highest orange warning for heat on Friday, with maximum temperatures of 37C in the area of the fire.<\/p>\n

Wildfires have devoured more than 283,000 hectares of land in Spain this year, according to the European Forest Fire Information System, after a record 2025 saw almost 400,000 hectares go up in smoke.<\/p>\n

Read more:
Evacuations across Europe amid warning of ‘very extreme’ wildfire conditions<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Firefighters raced to save a mythical 1,000-year-old monastery in northeastern Spain as a growing wildfire prompted the hasty…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":["post-593263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}