Ace Breaking News – UPDATE – France and Spain race to control wildfires before new heatwave arrives Reuters/AFP/AP News Agency Report

Published: Tue 28 Jul 2026 at 3:04pm

In short:

Spanish and French authorities are facing two crucial days to bring wildfires under control before a new heatwave hits in western Europe.

Fires to the west of Spain’s Madrid continue to rage, while fires in France are now 15km from the city of Bordeaux.

French President Emmanuel Macron is urging fire crews to “stay strong”.

French President Emmanuel Macron is urging fire crews to “stay strong” as they battle to bring a monster wildfire under control.

On a visit to a coordination centre in south-west France, Mr Macron heard how the blaze raging since last week has been wildly unpredictable, transforming at times into a self-feeding firestorm.

The wildfire has burned through an area four times the size of Paris and forced 220,000 people to flee their homes.

“We’re facing a completely unprecedented fire,” Mr Macron said.

He described the situation as France’s worst fire-related crisis since World War II and praised firefighting teams that stopped the inferno’s progression Monday as it edged toward the wine region city of Bordeaux.

But woodlands are still smouldering and Mr Macron and other government officials say the battle is not yet won, with another heatwave forecast this week.

“The weeks ahead will be hard. We must hold firm,” Mr Macron said.

Huge losses in Spain

About 100,000 people in Spain have been told to leave their homes or seek shelter as the country battles wildfires.

Magaly Vargas sobbed as she stared down at the square of grey ash where her caravan once stood.

“This is where I used to live,” she cried.

“There’s nothing left of it. It’s awful. Awful.”

Around her, crumpled sheet roofs and bars of twisted metal jutted from the ruins of the Pantano del Burguillo camping ground west of Madrid, ravaged by Spain’s worst wildfire on record.

More than 30 people were evacuated from the site on the shore of the Burguillo reservoir when the flames attacked on Friday, including Ms Vargas, 64, who handled its public relations.

They were among the scores of thousands of people ordered to leave their homes across the region.

“This is a house. This was a mobile home,” said the site’s co-owner Maria Angeles Canete, 54, pointing to the remains of the structures where plastic walls melted and disappeared in the inferno.

Along with her husband Manuel Pascual, 58, she owned this and one other nearby camping ground. Both were destroyed.

“We lost everything,” Ms Canete said, fighting back tears.

“We have nothing.”

When the fire approached on Friday, the couple fled by boat onto the reservoir.

“The trees lit up with flames,” Ms Canete said.

“Then something went bang, and we heard the gas canisters exploding.”

They returned later to find the whole camp burnt to the ground. Stacks of smashed porcelain plates and pots lay in the embers.

On the slopes around the site stretched acres of charred earth, rocks and pines, with burnt houses and outhouses, their walls and windows scorched black.

Some villagers return home

Elsewhere, east of the Castilla y Leon region, some locals were returning to their villages following last week’s evacuations.

David Sanchez, 48, a decorator, went back to work in the village of Cebreros on Monday after two nights at his brother’s home in another village.

White smoke still clouded the sky. Specks of ash floated down and settled on cars. At the edge of town, dry vegetation smouldered by the roadside.

Mr Sanchez had a small parcel of land where he grew olives and pistachios, all now destroyed by the flames.

“Now it’s time to clean up and plant again, and that’s it. It’s a shitty situation, to be honest,” he said.

His workmate Oscar Espinosa, 20, said he left the village on Thursday but came back on Friday and went out to nearby woodland to help stop the spread of the fire by clearing ground with tools.

“It’s hell, everything is burning,” he said.

“All our hills have been burnt. All the greenery that we had has been devastated.”

The spread of the large fires converging in central Spain slowed overnight, authorities said.

But the blaze in Castellon province raged out of control as the weather agency warned of another potential heatwave this week.

“What we’re experiencing isn’t a succession of isolated events,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said.

“It’s the most painful expression of a climate emergency that is making sixth-generation wildfires more ferocious, heatwaves more frequent, and our territory more vulnerable,”

he said.

The so-called sixth-generation fires are the most extreme and uncontrollable category of forest blazes, capable of generating their own weather and destroying thousands of hectares every hour. Many scientists blame such fires and heatwaves on human-driven climate change.

Maria Angeles Serrano, an evacuee in Castellon, said she was particularly upset about the impact on nature.

“Material damage is one thing, but that can be repaired, so to speak. What really hurts is the emotional loss.”

Heat set to build again this week

The wildfires in south-western France have delivered a shock to the tourism-dependent economy, Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Monday.

The prized Bordeaux wine-growing areas have not been affected, according to Christophe Chateau, communications director at the Bordeaux wine industry association CIVB.

He added that drought remained the industry’s biggest concern.

South of the border in central Spain three separate fronts remained active in the mountains north-west of Madrid in the provinces of Madrid, Toledo and Avila. The Avila blaze has been classified as the biggest wildfire in recent Spanish history.

“Today and tomorrow are absolutely crucial days in tackling this wildfire. From Wednesday onwards, weather forecasts become significantly more unfavourable,” Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said.

France faced a similar situation, with slightly easier conditions on Monday before temperatures rise again to as high as 37 degrees Celsius later this week in the Bordeaux area, according to the French weather office.

In both Bordeaux and Avila, temperatures have averaged 32C, almost 6C above the July’s normal high between 1961 and 1990, according to the Reuters Climate Monitor.

The scale of this summer’s wildfires in Europe is putting pressure on firefighting resources and raising questions about how to respond.

Aircraft from Turkey, Italy and Greece, as well as a Portuguese wildfire intervention team, are joining the firefighting efforts in Spain.

Switzerland is supporting France by sending two Super Puma helicopters and their crews after a request from Paris.

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