Cooling temperatures offer hope in Spain wildfire fight

Firefighters in Spain are hoping cooling temperatures and rain in the coming days will help douse destructive wildfires that have killed several people and destroyed homes.

The drought-fed wildfires, which ripped through almost as much land on Monday as was lost to fire during the whole of 2024, prompted Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to announce a civil protection emergency on Tuesday.

The battle to contain the fires has been boosted by teams and equipment from throughout Europe, and Sanchez said the expected end of a 16-day heat wave and the prospect of rain offered hope that the fires may soon be slowed.

However, he said the overriding reason why severe wildfires have hit Spain was down to global warming caused by human activity, and that it must be addressed.

"We're seeing the climate emergency accelerate and worsen significantly, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula, each year," he said, vowing to tackle the root cause by putting forward a plan next month to turn climate emergency policies into permanent state policies.

During a visit to the fire-ravaged autonomous community of Extremadura, in the central-western province of Badajoz, Sanchez said areas seriously damaged by wildfires will get government help for their reconstruction.

So far this year, around 383,000 hectares of land have been burned across Spain, which is about the size of the island of Mallorca.

The European Forest Fire Information System of the European Union said the amount of land lost to wildfires this year is the largest recorded since records began in 2006. And it said the area is more than four times the size of the average annual total recorded between 2006 and 2024.

While Spain has been one of the most seriously affected countries, wildfires have also devastated parts of other European nations, including Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy and Romania. And Spain's neighbor, Portugal, has recorded one of its worst wildfire seasons for two decades, with eight national roads and several rail lines forced to close because of fires, and more than 2,700 firefighters tackling blazes.

News agency Agencia EFE reported that the firefighting efforts in Portugal, as in Spain, have been boosted by teams from other European countries, and by at least 35 firefighting aircraft.

Portugal's National Republican Guard, or GNR, said, "The protection of people and property continues to be one of the GNR's priorities, supported by preventive and surveillance actions, with the reinforcement of patrols … and surveillance and monitoring through drones, which can act in the rapid detection of fire outbreaks."

Government agencies in Portugal said at least 172,000 hectares of land had been burned across the country as of Sunday, but that cooler temperatures in the coming days may help slow the spread of the fires.