Fires have also broken out in Greece, France, Turkey and the Balkans as a heatwave swept through Europe.<\/p>\n
Meteorologists say such extremes are becoming more frequent and intense because of human-induced climate change, which is causing weather events to become more frequent and severe.<\/p>\n
In Portugal, around 15 people were also injured – one critically – while fighting fires on Tuesday near the central city of Sabugal, news agency AFP reported. <\/p>\n
Local media in Spain reports that 40 fires are still active despite temperatures dropping. <\/p>\n
The most intense heat, when temperatures surpassed 40C in many regions of Spain, has now passed but Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez urged people to “exercise extreme caution”.<\/p>\n
“Critical moments remain, difficult hours remain,” he added.<\/p>\n
At least 373,000 hectares have been scorched in Spain this year, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.<\/p>\n
Dozens of villages have been evacuated due to the fires.<\/p>\n
“We had to run away because the fire was coming in from everywhere – everywhere – above us, below us, all around,” Isidoro, 83, a resident in the Ourense province of Galicia, told AFP.<\/p>\n
Spanish officials said many fires had been sparked by lightning during dry storms, but arson is suspected in some cases.<\/p>\n
The interior ministry says 32 people have been arrested and 188 investigations had been launched.<\/p>\n
While weather conditions are currently favourable for wildfires, they can be sparked by barbecues, cigarette stubs or discarded bottles. Causing a wildfire is a criminal offence in Spain, even if accidental.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fires have also broken out in Greece, France, Turkey and the Balkans as a heatwave swept through Europe.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12,26],"class_list":{"0":"post-359623","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\/115061564567776139","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359623","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=359623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}