Hundreds evacuated from major new Spanish wildfire

MADRID: More than 1,200 people have fled a major new wildfire raging north of Madrid on Monday that has been burning through a mountainous area dotted with tiny villages, firefighters said.

The fire started Thursday in a forest-covered mountainous area near the village of La Mierla in the Castilla-La Mancha region, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Madrid.

The authorities ordered the evacuation of four more villages late on Sunday, bringing to over 1,200 the number of people who have had to flee their homes, the regional forest fire response service said on X.

The fire has devoured more than 26,000 hectares (65,000 acres) of land, an area roughly equivalent to the Scottish city of Edinburgh.

The head of the regional government, Emiliano Garcia-Page, said the authorities were making a “truly titanic” effort to contain the blaze.

“We will defeat this fire, people should have no doubt about that,” he told reporters, saying the “absolute priority” was to “protect towns and population centres”.

The fire’s “complexity” was that it was raging through “the emptied Spain, the Spain of abandoned territories”.

“These are immense areas dotted with micro-villages, tiny population centres. We have nearly 30 hamlets inside the fire zone, surrounded by flames,” Garcia-Page said.

An AFP journalist saw bright red flames and smoke rising from the ground late on Sunday night from a commercial plane flying over the affected region.

Firefighters on Sunday managed to curtail the spread of another wildfire near Zaragoza in northeastern Spain after burning around 15,000 hectares.

Earlier this month, Spain suffered one of its deadliest wildfires in recent history when a blaze in the southern province of Almeria killed 13 people and destroyed around 7,000 hectares.

Scientists say human-caused climate change is increasing the length, intensity and frequency of heatwaves, drying out vegetation and raising the risk of destructive wildfires.

In 2025, more than 393,000 hectares were destroyed by fire, according to the European Forest Fire Information System — the most in Spain’s recent history.