In the worst year of fires for nearly two decades, a reduction in rural firefighters is held responsible for loss of life and landscape

The spectacular view from Salvador Gálvez's hill-top restaurant, El Collao de la Seca, above the country town of Alcublas, was once of rolling hills dotted with Mediterranean pines and scented wild herbs.

Now it looks out over a charred landscape where blackened pine cones cling to the few fragile, carbonised tree trunks and branches left standing after one of Spain's worst forest fires swept through 10,000 hectares (24,710 acres) of land.

"The miracle is that this place did not burn down as well," said Gálvez, pointing to blackened scrub just metres from the building. "It took them two hours to get here and start fighting the flames."

As Spain experiences its worst year of wildfires for almost 20 years, cuts in rural firefighting teams are being blamed for the loss of lives and landscapes.

In one of the most dramatic episodes, Pascal Couton, a disabled French man, and his 14-year-old daughter, Océane, died trying to jump into the sea when dozens of people abandoned their cars to escape a blaze that swept across a cliff-top road in Girona, north-eastern Spain.

"Two of my colleagues died two weeks ago," said Robert Rubio, a forester, ecologist and professional firefighter from Andilla, 12 miles from Alcublas. The men, a rural firefighter and a forestry agent, were caught by a fire in Torremanzanas, further south.

This summer, 1,424 sq km (550 sq miles) of land have burned – an area larger than Berkshire, Hong Kong or Los Angeles – as Spaniards get used to the sight of firefighting helicopters and aircraft bombarding burning forests and mountainsides with water.

"The summer is not over, so I am afraid there will probably be more," Rafael Gómez de Alamo, a wildfire expert at the ministry of agriculture, told RNE radio as the authorities on Wednesday reported that a further 100 sq km of land had burned over three days at Castrocontrigo, northern Spain.

Several wet years, followed by a dry winter and hot summer have combined to produce perfect wildfire conditions, with dried-out undergrowth ready to spread the flames.

But a combination of official negligence, rural population flight and disappearing herds of sheep and goats are largely to blame.

The blaze that swept through 90% of Alcublas's open land had already destroyed much of the pine forest along the valley to nearby Andilla, which had to be evacuated. "In 15 years of fighting fires I had never seen anything like it," said Rubio.

Locals in Andilla praised Rubio and mayor Jesus Ruiz for saving a significant part of the surrounding forest after ordering a clearout of deadwood earlier this year. "At least visitors still have the view," said Esther Ruiz, who runs a small restaurant for weekend and summer tourists by the village church.

Such measures are, however, rare in a region where public hillside land and forests are sometimes barely managed at all and locals are banned from taking matters into their own hands.

Rubio said cuts began last year, when the Valencia regional government hired only a tenth of the number of temporary local summer firefighters compared with previous years – though officials say this year the region has lost only 200 of the 11,700 working to limit wildfires in 2011. Regional governments in north-eastern Catalonia and north-western Galicia, meanwhile, are spending 20% less than two years ago.

With the first half an hour crucial to putting out a blaze, the distances firefighters must now travel make it more likely wildfires will spread.

"Here all the farmers filled the small tanker trailers they use for treating their crops with water, but they were ordered not to go out and fight the flames themselves," said Rafa Casaña, a member of an Alcublas conservation group. "Instead we saw soldiers standing around waiting for orders while the aircraft and helicopters were sent off to fight another big fire elsewhere."

But while politicians argue over firefighter numbers, a deeper malaise lies behind Spain's lost landscapes – decades of flight from the countryside and laws that keep locals from using public land.

"In the 1920s, there were 30,000 sheep and goats grazing in the hills around Alcublas," explained Casaña. "Now there are just 300."

Seven million of Spain's sheep and goats, 28% of the total, have disappeared over the past four years. Fewer sheep mean that dried grass and underbrush accumulate – providing ideal conditions for fire to spread. "And if there are no shepherds, there is no one to spot the fires," said Juan Ignacio Senovilla, of the Small Farmers Union.

In Andilla, Rubio has reintroduced sheep flocks. "Here there was only one flock left, but the economic crisis helped us persuade four men to start flocks and go back to shepherding, and we even have a 19-year-old shepherd."

Well managed public land should pay for itself and provide jobs in a country with 25% unemployment. "We paid for cleaning up the first part of the forest by selling firewood," said Rubio, who blames stifling regional government bureaucracy for preventing similar projects being set up elsewhere. "There is now a healthy market for biomass to burn as well."

Experts agree that prevention, rather than extinction, is the secret to saving some of Spain's most spectacular landscapes. "In Spain we have comparatively more firefighting capacity than the United States, with well equipped and trained people," said del Alamo. "But we are talking about situations when the level of energy being given off is equivalent to that of an atomic bomb. That is why it is so important to take preventive measures."