{"id":354240,"date":"2025-08-18T13:17:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T13:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/354240\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T13:17:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T13:17:10","slug":"wildfires-rage-in-spain-and-portugal-amid-searing-heat-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/354240\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildfires rage in Spain and Portugal amid searing heat | Wildfires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Relentless heat and raging wildfires continue to ravage southern Europe<\/a>, with one-quarter of weather stations in Spain recording 40C temperatures, as the prime minister urged people to \u201cleave the climate emergency outside of partisan struggles\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Spanish weather agency Aemet recorded a high of 45.8C in C\u00e1diz on Sunday, while one in eight weather stations nationwide hit peaks of at least 42C (108F) . The agency warned of \u201cvery high or extreme fire danger\u201d in most of the country in a post on social media on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the heatwave is starting to subside, very high temperatures will still be reached today in the east and south of the peninsula,\u201d it said. \u201cBe cautious.\u201d<\/p>\n

A pyrocumulus cloud swells over Vilarmel village during a fire in the Galicia region of Spain. Photograph: Mikel Konate\/Reuters<\/p>\n

A fourth person was killed by the fires in Spain<\/a> when a firefighting truck overturned on a steep forest road, while in neighbouring Portugal, which has also had extreme heat, another firefighter died, bringing the national death toll to two.<\/p>\n

The Spanish government said on Sunday that an extra 500 soldiers would join the 1,400 troops trying to bring deadly wildfires under control. The prime minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, announced a \u201cstate pact\u201d to tackle the climate emergency as he visited Ourense and Le\u00f3n, one of the regions engulfed by flames.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need a strategy that anticipates a better, more secure and more equitable response for our fellow citizens in the face of the worsening and accelerating effects of the climate emergency in our country,\u201d S\u00e1nchez said. \u201cAnd that requires a great state pact that leaves the climate emergency outside of partisan struggles and ideological issues, where we focus on scientific evidence and act accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

S\u00e1nchez\u2019s proposed pact received a dismissive response from the opposition conservative People\u2019s party (PP), which has called for more troop deployments and accused the prime minister of absenting himself from the crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cState pacts don\u2019t put out the flames, nor do they restore what\u2019s been lost,\u201d said Ester Mu\u00f1oz, a PP spokesperson. \u201cPeople were expecting a lot more than a smokescreen designed to save his reputation after he\u2019d gone missing for a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

Extreme heat, made hotter by carbon pollution, has fuelled devastating wildfires across southern Europe this month, the latest in a series of disasters exacerbated by climate breakdown amid a continental rollback of green policies.<\/p>\n

A tractor interrupts a wildfire line in Kostinbrod, Bulgaria. Photograph: Reuters<\/p>\n

The blazes have burned 530,000 hectares so far this year, more than double the average over the past two decades, and forced several overwhelmed governments from Spain to Bulgaria to seek firefighting help from the EU. Portugal<\/a> activated the EU\u2019s civil protection mechanism on Friday with a request for four Canadair water-bombing planes.<\/p>\n

The prolonged heatwave has broken temperature records across the continent. It is expected to die down in Spain<\/a> after Monday and subsided in some countries over the weekend.<\/p>\n

M\u00e9t\u00e9o France, the French national weather agency, said temperatures were falling on Sunday but the wildfire risk remained high or very high in several southern regions.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Mediterranean and south-western departments of the country are experiencing significant drought, which means that vegetation is highly sensitive to fire,\u201d the agency said on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The head of a dead fish lies in the almost-dry Aume riverbed in Saint-Fraigne, France. Photograph: Yohan Bonnet\/AP<\/p>\n

In Portugal, which has been under a state of alert since the start of the month, large rural fires have killed two people and caused several injuries.<\/p>\n

The minister for internal affairs, Maria L\u00facia Amaral, extended the wildfire alert on Sunday until Tuesday night but left a press conference when journalists tried to ask questions, Portuguese media reported. Andr\u00e9 Ventura, the head of the far-right Chega party, called for her resignation. \u201cWe are reaching the limit of what is acceptable,\u201d he said on Sunday.<\/p>\n

A woman flees as a forest fire gathers pace in Pampilhosa da Serra, Portugal. Photograph: Paulo Cunha\/EPA<\/p>\n

In a radio interview on Monday morning, Spain\u2019s defence minister, Margarita Robles, said the fires were unlikely to be brought under control until the heatwave ended later on Monday. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to be able to end this situation until the heatwave dies down,\u201d Robles told Cadena Ser. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing fires with different characteristics because of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the Military Emergencies Unit (UME), founded to help deal with disasters, had never faced such challenging conditions. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a fire situation that\u2019s never been seen before. The UME hasn\u2019t seen anything like this since it was established 20 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Relentless heat and raging wildfires continue to ravage southern Europe, with one-quarter of weather stations in Spain recording…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-354240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115049964905037765","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}