Monday, 18 August 2025, 09:08

| Updated 09:19h.

The Spanish government has accepted the offer of Germany, Slovakia and the Netherlands to help combat the forest fires ravaging several areas of Spain, thus adding to the reinforcement already provided by France and Italy, and to the deployments of Spanish civilian and military means. There are currently 19 active forest fires in operational situation 2.

The European Civil Protection Mechanism (ECPM) is still active and is managing offers from different countries through coordination meetings with the Emergency Response Coordination Centre to organise these deployments and possible future support, sources from the Ministry of the Interior confirmed to Europa Press on Sunday.

Therefore, following the meeting of the state coordination and management committee of the state emergency plan (CECOD) to address the situation caused by the fires affecting several territories in Spain, the offer of a German team of forest firefighters by vehicle (GFFF-V), consisting of between 50 and 60 people and more than 20 vehicles of different capacities, has been accepted.

The deployment of this German team will be led by the Directorate-General of Civil Protection and Emergencies of the Ministry of the Interior, which will deploy a national coordinator to liaise and coordinate with the authorities of the Regional Government of Extremadura. The deployment area has yet to be decided and prior coordination meetings have yet to be held with the team to assess needs.

In addition, Slovakia has made available a BlackHawk helicopter with a a capacity of 3,400 litres of water to be stationed at the Pinofranqueado (Cáceres) forestry brigade base. The Netherlands has also offered two Chinook helicopters with the capacity to transport up to 7,000 litres of water, which will be stationed at the León Air Base.

The aircraft from the Netherlands will join those that have already arrived in Spain from Italy and France to help with the fires. It was on Thursday when the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, announced the arrival in Galicia of two Canadair air tankers sent by France. Meanwhile, the Italian delegation landed on Saturday at Matacán air base (Salamanca).

Specifically, the two French Canadair air tankers that operated last Thursday and Friday from the Santiago de Compostela base completed their missions and returned to their home country. For their part, the two Italian aircraft are already carrying out firefighting missions in different parts of León.

In the province of León

However, the Interior Ministry has stated that it is considering the offer of a French team of forest firefighters with vehicles (GFFF-V), while awaiting more detailed information on the resources to be deployed in order to make the necessary arrangements to assign them to missions. It will be deployed in the province of León in order to tackle fires in this province or in Ourense.

The Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) and the Ministry of Defence through the Emergency Military Unit (UME) will assign missions and integrate the French and Slovak crews in their teams.

According to the same sources, all of MITECO’s forestry brigades, as well as its aerial resources, are operating at different points in the areas most affected by the fires. The UME has activated all its troops and units of the three armies have already joined the extinguishing work at different points.

Despite the fact that Spain’s state meteorological agency (Aemet) has confirmed that the weather situation will improve from today onwards, the weather conditions are still adverse for the required firefighting work.