The elephants carried on grazing peacefully as the flames approached, imperturbable despite the fires ravaging the land around their wildlife park west of Madrid.
"The animals that were outside kept very calm," one of the park's veterinarians, Christian Cabrera, 36, told AFP.
Of the 2,000 animals at Safari Madrid, only the giraffes get stressed. "They are easily frightened and have had difficulty eating."
At the height of the blaze, which scorched 77,000 hectares in the Madrid region and the neighbouring province of Ávila, the fire blazed visibly along the ridges of the surrounding hills.
"At night, the sky was red," said Cabrera.
