Marc Castellnou, a Spanish wildfire investigator, was called to Portugal after the first incident to help the government investigation unearth what had happened. A trained firefighter and fire engineer, Castellnou had roved between large wildfires in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Australia since the mid-1990s, trying to understand their behaviour better. He knew that wildfires were a common and normal event in Portugal – but not like this. It did, however, look worryingly familiar.