Three days after the tragedy, officials using painstaking DNA analysis were finally able to identify all the charred bodies of the firefighters, 10 men and one woman aged from 24 to 52 -- and hand them over to their families for the funerals.

"It's time for everyone to weep over the deaths," the top government official for Guadalajara province, Carmen Valmoriso said after authorities announced they had completed the identification process.

The volunteer firefighters were caught up in the blaze on Saturday that was apparently sparked by a barbecue, thought to be lit by walkers despite warnings of the tinderbox conditions in the pine forest in a nature reserve east of the capital Madrid near Guadalajara.

Funerals were spread out over the day from Guadalajara and elsewhere in the province of the same name, as well as in the central cities of Madrid, Ciudad Real and Cuenca where families and friends were coming to grips with the consequences of one of Spain's worst forest fires in recent years.

Bitterness, sadness and rage were in the air at the burial of Luis Solano, 35, one of the firemen who died.

"He died as a hero, but the impression we have today is that he was an unnecessary hero," said Julio Molina, 36, who had been a friend since school days, adding Solano had been "crazy about the outdoors."

"All this emotion will be forgotten tomorrow," said another black-T-shirted friend of Solano.

"People will start to have barbecues all over the place. It will be the same uncivic-mindedness, the same disorganisation and at the end he will have died for nothing."

Earlier, as investigators concluded the identification process, families of the victims had crossed paths with each other in the town morgue.

To speed up the identification process, a magistrate in charge of the investigation Tuesday had ordered saliva samples taken from family members to compare their DNA with that of the victims.

The drought shows no sign of letting up, and temperatures in the interior of the country on Wednesday were expected to reach between 34 and 38 degrees Celsius (93 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit).

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero expressed his condolences to the families of the victims and announced a special government meeting for Friday to adopt measures to deal with the fires.

He promised "strict" measures and promised heavy penalties for those who caused the fires.

The two main Spanish unions called on all firefighters in the region of Castilla-La-Mancha to stop work for half an hour, from noon to 12:30 pmto 1030 GMT), in homage to those who died.

Jesus Abad, the only one to get out alive after he and the 11 other firefighters were dispatched to battle the flames, told of what he called a miraculous escape.

"The hurricane of fire was enormous. ... I think it saw us and said 'You belong to me'," Abad told Spanish national television in an interview from his hospital bed, his arms and face swathed in bandages.

The 45-year-old suffered first-degree burns and several broken ribs, when a sudden shift of wind turned the blaze into a death trap.

"The fire followed us because at the outset, it was very far away. Suddenly, there was black smoke ... and you began to be scared. You told yourself 'the wind's changed.'"

The firefighters pulled back momentarily, he said, but then tried again to get closer to the blaze.

"When we went back a second time the flames were there. All of us dashed to the vehicles to get away. But the fire didn't leave us the time. There was something ... like a gigantic wave of fire," he said in the interview, broadcast Tuesday and again on Wednesday morning.

Abad was able to get into his truck but it only turned worse.

"Inside the truck, I saw myself dying, outside of the truck, I saw myself dying. You're without oxygen, you see yourself burning up, you see yourself dying."

In zero visibility and searing heat, he lost control of his truck and drove into a ditch. Managing to crawl out of a window, he stumbled upon a second firetruck, this one a water tanker that had crashed and spilled its load.

Abad said it was his "will to live" that allowed him to escape -- that, and the moist earth soaked by thousands of gallons (liters) of water.

Among those who died, four were married or separated with children.

The fire still blazed on one front on Wednesday but was encircled by an eight-kilometer (five-mile) barrier. So far, it has consumed some 13,000 hectares (32,500) of pine trees.

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