Thousands of firefighters backed by the military and water-bombing aircraft on Monday battled dozens of wildfires across Spain and Portugal, as the death toll increased to six since the outbreaks began.
The Iberian Peninsula has been particularly affected by forest fires fuelled by a succession of heatwaves and droughts blamed on climate change that have hit the southern Mediterranean.
Two firefighters were killed on Sunday – one in each country, both in road accidents – taking the death toll to two in Portugal and four in Spain.
The head of Spain’s Civil Protection and Emergencies, Virginia Barcones, told broadcaster TVE there were currently 23 “active fires in operation status two”, indicating a serious and direct threat to the population.
The fires, now in their second week, were concentrated in Galicia, Castile and Leon, and Extremadura regions.
Deadly wildfires ravaging Spain have burnt the equivalent of nearly half a million football fields this year, setting a new record, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis) on Monday.
The 2025 fires have so far burnt more than 343,000 hectares, surpassing the previous record for the period of 306,000 hectares, set in 2022.
Barcones said she hoped weather conditions would turn to help tackle the fires, as Spain’s meteorological agency forecast “the last day of this heatwave”, which has seen temperatures hit 45°C in parts of the south.
Spain is being helped with firefighting aircraft from France, Italy, Slovakia, and the Netherlands, while Portugal is receiving air support from Sweden and Morocco.
“It’s a very difficult, very complicated situation,” Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles told TVE.
The size and severity of the fires and the intensity of the smoke – visible from space – were making “airborne action” difficult,” she added.
In Portugal, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said a firefighter died on Sunday night in a traffic accident that left two of his colleagues seriously injured.
A former mayor in the eastern town of Guarda died on Friday while trying to tackle a fire.
Some 2,000 firefighters were deployed across northern and central Portugal on Monday, with about half of them concentrated in the town of Arbanil.
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