Firefighters in France and Spain were racing against the clock to get control of ferocious wildfires that have burned through vast areas of the Mediterranean as another heatwave closes in.
French president Emmanuel Macron warned that conditions would get tougher as he visited a firefighting operations centre in the hard-hit region of Gironde, where the blaze has caused uncontrollable “firestorms”.
“We are facing a situation today that is the most difficult we’ve seen, the most difficult since the second World War,” he told emergency responders, noting that the usual August peak of the wildfire season is still to come.
More than 250,000 people have been evacuated in France, where a fire of record size has reached the outer suburbs of the city of Bordeaux, while the largest fire in Spain’s history has forced over 90,000 people from their homes.
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The national weather agencies of both countries warned a heatwave expected to bring temperatures as high as 42 degrees later this week would hinder firefighting efforts and make the risk of new blazes extremely high.
[ Why Europe’s wildfires are proving so fierce and difficult to stopOpens in new window ]
“There are difficult hours ahead,” Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said in a visit to a firefighting command centre, saying the priority was to save lives and protect population centres.
“The climate emergency and the systematic increase in temperatures we are seeing each year are exponentially increasing the extent and intensity of the wildfires,” Sánchez said. “It is no longer an exception. It is the rule.”
Tens of thousands of people have been ordered to shelter inside their houses as the fires sent plumes of toxic smoke over built-up areas.
As well as the record-breaking fire in the Gironde region, thought to have been caused accidentally by a brush-clearing machine, French firefighters were also combating major fires in Corsica, and in the Var, Landes, and Hautes-Alpes regions.
In Spain, major wildfires were advancing through the regions of Toledo and Ávila, and the western part of the region of the capital city, Madrid.
[ Wildfires may continue to burn until November, officials warnOpens in new window ]
The Spanish government forbid the use of agricultural machinery in the hardest-hit regions to reduce the risk of sparking new fires, while forests in southwest France were under “black alert”, banning all visitors and the use of any engines.
Speaking after an emergency meeting of the French government on Monday, France’s interior minister Laurent Nuñez described this year’s wildfires as “completely exceptional”.
More than 116,000 hectares of forest and vegetation have been burned in France since January, far exceeding the 70,000 hectares reported for the whole of 2025.
Spain’s government said the 172,000 hectares of forested land burned this year was six times greater than in the same period of 2025.
France’s minister for ecological transition Monique Barbut said that figures were not yet available to gauge the impact of the fires on wildlife, “but it is clear that the figures will be catastrophic by the end of the summer”.
