{"id":218065,"date":"2026-07-24T04:49:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T04:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/thousands-flee-wildfires-in-france-and-spain-as-temperatures-reach-extreme-levels-in-southern-europe-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T04:49:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T04:49:12","slug":"thousands-flee-wildfires-in-france-and-spain-as-temperatures-reach-extreme-levels-in-southern-europe-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/thousands-flee-wildfires-in-france-and-spain-as-temperatures-reach-extreme-levels-in-southern-europe-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands flee wildfires in France and Spain as temperatures reach extreme levels in southern Europe – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spain declares national emergency around Madrid, as marine heatwave sees some parts of Mediterranean Sea 5C hotter than normal
Brutal heat torching southern Europe<\/a> has forced about 30,000 people to flee wildfires in France and Spain as a marine heatwave scalds the Mediterranean and researchers warn that \u201cDantesque\u201d scenarios cannot be ruled out as infernos worsen.
A \u201cparticularly intense\u201d wildfire on France\u2019s southwestern Atlantic coast prompted the evacuation of more than 18,800 people, including thousands of tourists from campsites and holiday homes, as firefighters struggled to control the blaze.
Spain late Thursday declared a national emergency in the Madrid region and in the province of Avila, near the capital, in the wake of several wildfires burning out of control.
Around the Madrid region, the fires have forced the evacuation of 10,000 people, placing the response to the crisis in the hands of a military emergency unit.
\u201cThe government has deployed every available resource to stop the terrible fires currently affecting numerous areas: Avila, Leon, Toledo, Madrid and other parts of Spain,\u201d Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said earlier on X, urging the public to exercise \u201cgreat caution\u201d and heed instructions from authorities.
Almost 125,000 hectares have already burnt in Spain this year compared with 393,000 for the whole of last year, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.
Extreme highs of 44.7C were recorded on Thursday in Cieza, in the Spanish province of Murcia, according to Aemet, the Spanish meteorological agency. The previous day, the Spanish cities of Albacete, \u00c1vila and Teruel broke their July temperatures records with heat as high as 42C.
A marine heatwave is affecting 80% of the Mediterranean Sea\u2019s surface area, according to the Mediterranean Monitoring System. Daily temperatures on Tuesday had reached \u201cextreme\u201d levels in several parts, with some anomalies 5C hotter than the average from 1991 to 2020.
The severity of fires in the EU has broken records for this time of year, data from the European Forest Fire Information System showed on Wednesday, and about twice as much land had burned by 22 July than the average for that date over the last two decades. France has broken records for the area burned; it and Spain have broken records for the number of fires.
The fire in France began in a dense pine forest near the village of Saumos about 40km (25 miles) west of Bordeaux and just north of the bay of Arcachon, a popular tourist destination. It had burned more than 3,700 hectares (9,140 acres) in a little over 24 hours, firefighters said on Thursday.
No casualties had been reported but several houses had succumbed to the flames, they said. The Gironde prefecture said that while 800 firefighters and four water-bombing planes were battling to bring the fire under control, the situation remained \u201cunfavourable\u201d and the blaze was not yet stabilised.
\u201cThe fire is highly erratic and gaining very significant force,\u201d said Marc Vermeulen, the regional fire service chief, on Thursday evening. \u201cOne of the main fronts is very close to a semi-urban area. We are defending house by house.\u201d
France has endured three almost back-to-back heatwaves since May as climate breakdown leads to more frequent and extreme weather events causing thousands of excess deaths<\/a>, evaporating soils and waterways<\/a> and fuelling wildfires.
Patrick Martineau, 69, who was evacuated from the village of Le Porge, told Agence France-Presse that police had \u201ccome banging on the doors \u2026 It\u2019s scary \u2013 hard to take in. When we bought a home here, we never thought there\u2019d be a fire risk.\u201d
Sylvie, a holidaymaker from Paris staying in the relatively more built-up area of L\u00e8ge-Cap-Ferret, said a neighbour had told her: \u201c\u2018Get your bags ready, we\u2019re going to be evacuated during the night.\u2019 We put the bulk of our stuff in the car boot and left.\u201d
Elke Urbain, from Antwerp in Belgium, who holidays in the area every year, said she was advised while she was on the beach on Wednesday afternoon to \u201cgo back immediately to the campsite and gather your things. It\u2019s just terribly sad.\u201d
In 2022, a wildfire burned more than 30,000 hectares in the same area<\/a>, forcing about 50,000 people to be evacuated. In tinder-dry conditions and fanned by a strong wind, the latest blaze has torn through the forest, with flames reaching 10 metres high.
Jean-Luc Helias, 54, from Le Porge, said he and his family had lived through that fire four years ago and \u201cthe firefighters do an amazing job to protect people\u2019s homes. All that matters to me is that my family is safe; the rest is just material possessions.\u201d
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Nine municipalities have opened reception centres for evacuees and were sheltering more than 2,500 people, the prefecture said. About 8,800 people were evacuated during the day on Thursday, 10,000 overnight.
Numerous roads in the area, including those leading to the Cap Ferret peninsula a few kilometres to the south \u2013 home to the villas of celebrities and millionaires and one of France\u2019s most exclusive holiday spots \u2013 were closed to all but essential traffic.
Police have opened an investigation into the causes of the wildfire, which the mayor of Le Porge, Martial Zaninetti, said on Wednesday appeared to have been started by a machine that was clearing undergrowth.
A fortnight ago, flames devastated a 10th of the Unesco-listed Fontainebleau forest<\/a> outside Paris in a rare wildfire so far north. France\u2019s interior minister, Laurent Nu\u00f1ez, has said more than 12,500 wildfires had broken out since the beginning of the year.
In Spain, authorities on Thursday ordered 3,500 people in a town west of Madrid to leave their homes because of a forest fire burning out of control.
The emergency services said on X evacuation messages had been sent to people in Aldea de Fresno, about 60 kilometres (38 miles) south-west of Madrid.
A fire that has burned 32,000 hectares in the province of Guadalajara, north of the capital, was described as stable.
Spanish wildfire scientists said they were not surprised by the extreme figures as the abandonment of rural land had left more overgrown vegetation and the rise in temperatures from climate breakdown made it easier for such plant matter to dry out and burn.
V\u00edctor Resco de Dios, a professor of forestry engineering and global change at the University of Lleida, said: \u201cAlthough it\u2019s difficult to predict how far things might go, we will soon be unable to rule out Dantesque scenarios like those seen in California or Australia, with fires or fire complexes reaching hundreds of thousands of hectares or even a million hectares.\u201d
The marine heatwave in the Mediterranean is projected to shrink but stay strong from Sardinia to Greece, according to a forecast for Saturday from Mercator Ocean. From Gibraltar to the Balearic Islands, strong heat is expected to drop to moderate levels, despite intensifying locally in the Alboran Sea.
Western Europe has been rocked by repeated heatwaves this summer, with extreme highs in June that scientists expect will have killed tens of thousands of people as hot days push bodies into overdrive and warm nights prevent them from resting.
On Wednesday, an analysis estimated<\/a> the cost of the June heatwave to the continent\u2019s grain farmers at \u20ac2bn (\u00a31.7bn) in lost revenue from 9m tonnes of destroyed crops. On Thursday, scientists found<\/a> climate breakdown had contributed to drought conditions, making levels of soil dryness five times more likely in western Europe and 11 times more likely in eastern Europe.<\/p>\n

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Spain declares national emergency around Madrid, as marine heatwave sees some parts of Mediterranean Sea 5C hotter than normalBrutal heat torching southern Europe has forced about 30,000 people to flee wildfires in France and Spain as a marine heatwave scalds the Mediterranean and researchers warn that \u201cDantesque\u201d scenarios cannot be ruled out as infernos worsen.A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":218066,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}