Spain declared a national emergency as huge blazes merged outside Madrid and searing heat left tinder-dry conditions across the region.
French authorities ordered the total evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula, a tourism hotspot on its Atlantic Coast. Two fires merged outside Madrid, and a third was on the verge of joining them, government officials said.
Both countries, which have suffered a succession of heatwaves and fires in recent months and years that scientists say have been exacerbated by climate change, sought help from the European Union as the blazes strained emergency services.
Spain’s national emergency – the first it had ever declared over a wildfire – opened up federal funding to tackle the crisis.
In southwest France, authorities sent boats to help the evacuation and a total of about 63,000 people, many of them tourists, were told to get out as two major, separate fires threatened homes and campsites, officials said.
The other major fire, which began in nearby Saumos, north of Cap Ferret, is threatening to cut off the only road out of the peninsula and is the largest so far this season in France, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told local television.
It has torn through more than 12,500 hectares of forest and destroyed more than 50 homes and one campsite, officials said.
In Spain, more than 19,000 people were ordered to evacuate from towns in the mountains west of Madrid, as more than 2,000 personnel and 10 aircraft struggled in vain to prevent the fires converging, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said.
A third fire in Avila province was on the verge or may have already merged with the two in Madrid, Nicanor Sen, the government representative for the Castile and Leon region, told reporters. Spanish police said they had arrested one person and were investigating another suspected of starting that fire by using heavy machinery in a prohibited area.
It is the second consecutive year that Spain has faced a particularly destructive fire season.
More than 29 major fires have broken out in Spain so far this year, damaging a surface area five times greater than at the same stage in 2025, when a record area was destroyed, Environment Minister Sara Aagesen said in a social media post.
Scientists say human-driven climate change is increasing the intensity of heatwaves, droughts and wildfires, while also creating conditions for sudden, destructive storms.
Greece was sending two CL-415 firefighting aircraft to Madrid and will operate across the area of Toledo, the Greek civil protection ministry said.
After a short reprieve over the weekend, average temperatures in France are expected to rise sharply again next week, according to official weather forecaster Meteo France.
Meanwhile, new wildfires broke out in Western Canada and forests continued to burn in Ontario as Canada battled what Prime Minister Mark Carney called one of the most intense wildfire seasons on record. Nearly 34,000 lightning strikes over the past week led to a series of fires and evacuation orders in the southern part of British Columbia.
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