More than 80,000 people have fled huge wildfires in Spain and France.
French authorities ordered the total evacuation, by land and sea, of one of the country’s best-known holiday spots.
Authorities in south-west France ordered the Cap Ferret peninsula on the Atlantic coast evacuated “village by village” in the face of an “intense, highly unpredictable” wildfire that has burned through more than 12,500 hectares (30,900 acres) of forest.
More than 44,000 people had been evacuated in two days to escape the Cap Ferret fire, the Gironde prefecture said, including thousands of holidaymakers in campsites and rental homes. Boats ferried hundreds off piers on the peninsula on Friday as the blaze threatened to cut off the only road to it.
About 800 firefighters and four water-bombing planes were battling the Gironde blaze north of Arcachon Bay, but the fire, which began on Wednesday near the village of Saumos 25 miles (40km) west of Bordeaux, was not yet stabilised.
Numerous roads in the area, including those leading to Cap Ferret, popular with French and international holidaymakers, and home to the villas of many celebrities and millionaires, were closed to all but essential traffic. Eighty houses had burned.
A second fire raging in the region, farther south near the popular holiday resort of Biscarrosse, had also burned through more than 2,500 hectares, the Landes prefect, Gilles Clavreul, said, and led to the evacuation of about 25,000 people. Clavreul stated that more than 600 firefighters were struggling to contain that blaze.
“The fire front looks very bad. There are a great many new fire starts ahead of the main blaze. The situation is highly dynamic and unfavourable.”
Gilles Clavreul,
France’s Interior Minister, Laurent Nuñez, said that 32 wildfires of varying size and intensity were burning across France, with 50,000 hectares scorched already so far this year.
Spain’s government declared its first national emergency for a wildfire as two major blazes merged into one outside Madrid and a third was on the verge of joining them, amid searing heat and tinder-dry conditions across much of southern Europe.
Madrid’s regional leader, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, said, “This is the worst wildfire in our region’s history,” describing “an unprecedented situation: a perfect storm of extremely high temperatures and relentless winds.”
Spain’s government declared a national emergency on Thursday evening after wildfires threatened communities near the capital and in the neighbouring province of Ávila, forcing more than 19,000 people to evacuate overnight and on Friday.
The interior ministry said the decision was taken because of the simultaneous outbreak of several fires, adverse weather conditions and the need to mobilise extensive resources from several public administrations
The regional government of Madrid requested assistance, describing the situation as one of “extreme gravity.” It said that at least four active fires could advance “beyond current extinguishing capacity.”
Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, chaired an emergency response meeting at the Moncloa palace this morning as the state meteorological office warned that the danger of more fires remained very high or extreme across much of the country.
“We’re living through a dramatic situation, not just in various Spanish provinces but also in regions of neighbouring countries. Forest fires are devastating thousands of hectares and affecting numerous communities.”
Pedro Sánchez
He promised the government had deployed “all available resources. It will be by your side during the emergency and the recovery.” The Prime Minister also thanked “all the emergency services that are fighting day and night.”
In an update issued today, Spain’s environment ministry said 29 big forest fires had been recorded so far in 2026, compared to an annual average of nine between January and the end of July per year over the past decade. Forest fires had burned about 114,796 hectares, compared with 25,133 by the same time last year.
France, Spain Seek EU Help Amid Wildfires
Both countries sought EU help. France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, said that he had activated the EU’s civil protection mechanism as the country, which has endured three almost back-to-back heatwaves since May, battled numerous wildfires mainly in the south-west and south-east.
Macron, who described the situation as “extremely intense,” said, “We will soon be able to count on reinforcements from two Croatian aircraft, two Portuguese planes, as well as two heavy helicopters from the Czech Republic and Slovakia.”
Spain’s interior ministry has also requested fire-fighting aircraft through the EU’s civil protection mechanism, which aims to strengthen civil protection cooperation between EU countries and 10 additional participating states.
The severity of fires in the EU has broken records for the time of year, data from the European Forest Fire Information System shows, with about twice as much land burned by 22 July than the average for that date over the past two decades.
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