Heat waves and scant rainfall in Europe have contributed to historic wildfires in France and Spain that have forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes in one of the biggest evacuation efforts since World War II.
Rising temperatures later this week could complicate efforts to battle the blazes that have scorched an area four times the size of Paris in southwestern France and are raging near Spain’s capital, Madrid.
Firefighters in Spain have called the blazes so violent that they could not be tackled head on. But the first glimmer of hope emerged Monday in France that the spread of a giant fire in the southwestern Gironde region may have slowed.
France’s Interior Ministry says fires have swept across 115,000 hectares (444 square miles) since January, the highest annual figure in the country’s modern records. Spain’s Minister for the Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, said the 153,000 hectares (591 square miles) burned this year is six times the amount that burned through the first half of 2025.
Contributing to this year’s total was Spain’s largest and third-largest fires ever in just over a week, with a blaze in the rural terrain of Ávila west of Madrid burning over 50,000 hectares. Earlier this month, 13 people died in a blaze in southeastern Almeria, Spain’s deadliest fire in recent memory.
Over 300,000 people have been displaced from their homes in France and Spain in what the EU on Monday called “one of the biggest evacuation operations in Europe.”
More than 250,000 people have been evacuated in France, with 220,000 of them in the southwestern region of Gironde. With France about to enter its peak August tourist season, Gironde authorities took steps to keep vacationers away, banning holiday camps for children and for people with disabilities.
A total of 76,000 people have been evacuated in Spain while 30,000 others have been confined to their homes, the government said.