Wildfires continued to rage on Monday morning in northwest Spain, particularly affecting Castile and Leon. There were 26 active fires in the region, according to news service Europa Press, ten of which were at the highest level of severity.
The fires claimed another victim on Sunday after a firefighter died when the vehicle he was driving overturned on the way to battle a blaze in Leon province. A fellow firefighter was injured in the incident, according to Spanish media, with the cause of the crash yet to be determined.
The accident took place on a forest track in the small municipality of Espinoso de Compludo, near the city of Ponferrada.
The wildfires have burnt the equivalent of nearly half a million football fields this year, setting a new record for the country, a European monitor said on Monday. The fires have so far burnt more than 343,000 hectares (848,000 acres), according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System, surpassing the record of 306,000 hectares for the same period in 2022.
A firefighter in Ourense, Galicia
ELENA FERNANDEZ/ZUMA/ALAMY
In the past week three people have died in Leon as a result of the fires, with the total death toll now standing at four. A firefighter was also killed in Portugal on Sunday, in a road accident, taking the death toll to two in the country.
The defence minister, Margarita Robles, told reporters on Monday that the fires would not be brought under control until the ongoing heatwave subsided.
“The UME [Military Emergencies Unit] has not seen anything like this in its 20 years of existence,” she said.
On Monday morning the high-speed AVE rail link between Madrid and Galicia remained suspended for a fifth day. A total of 16 roads were closed in the north of the country because of the fires, the traffic authority reported.
The Aemet state meteorological agency warned that the risk of fires remained very high or extreme in nearly all of the country.
A man battles the remains of a wildfire in Veiga das Meas, northwestern Spain
LALO R VILLAR/AP
Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, interrupted his holiday to visit scenes of devastation caused by the fires, which had been declared the country’s worst on record.
Sánchez, leader of the socialist party, returned to mainland Spain from the Canary Islands after being criticised for failing to show up in response to the fires in Extremadura, Castile and Leon, and Galicia — the three regional autonomous communities in western Spain, governed by the conservative Popular Party (PP).
Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, above, was told by the opposition leader that he “must stop always being late”
EUROPA PRESS/MEGA
In his first remarks to the media since the start of the crisis seven days ago, he said the next three days would be critical and proposed the formation of a “grand state pact” to prepare Spain for climate-related events such as wildfires and hurricanes.
A plane drops water on a wildfire in Veiga Das Meas
MIGUEL RIOPA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
A member of Spain’s Civil Guard in Veiga das Meas
LALO R VILLAR/AP
“We need to do a thorough analysis of how we can resize our prevention and response capabilities to the climate emergency. We must leave this issue outside of partisan strife. We are all part of the same state, and we must all work in the same direction,” he said.
He was speaking during a visit to a civil protection co-ordination centre in Ourense, Galicia, after which he travelled south to Leon.
His comments struck a glaringly different tone to the war of words conducted by his government in the past week. Oscar Puente, the transport minister, deleted a tweet in which he barracked the PP leader of Castilla and Leon for being on holiday, but later refused to apologise for making a joke out of the emergency in his home region.
Sánchez announced the deployment of an additional 500 civil protection personnel. The increased resources “will help us respond during the critical hours ahead”, he said, adding: “The weather is not helping us.” Temperatures across much of the peninsula have been hovering above 40C for the past ten days — a heatwave which is forecast to persist until midweek. At Valencia the temperature of the water of the Mediterranean reached 32C.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the PP opposition leader told Sánchez, to “not let more time pass” and to “deliver the necessary resources now” to put out the forest fires because the prime minister, in his opinion, “must stop always being late”.
A woman is comforted in Veiga das Meas
LALO R VILLAR/AP
On both sides of the border between Spain and Portugal, angry and despairing residents of the worst affected areas — which are rural and facing steep declines in their population — have voiced their sense of abandonment by the authorities in the face of the fires.
About 139,000 hectares of Portugal have burnt so far this year, with almost half lost in just the past two days. The area under fire is 16 times greater than last year.