Record wildfires in Spain and France displace about 375,000 as a fourth heat wave approaches

What happened

In Spain, the largest fire since records began has affected 77,000 hectares and forced around 100,000 people to evacuate or shelter indoors, El País reports, with 50,000 hectares burned in the province of Ávila alone and the front moving through Ávila and Toledo into the Madrid region. Rzeczpospolita, citing Spanish civil protection on 27 July, gives a higher figure of at least 175,000 people evacuated or confined across 65 municipalities and more than 80,000 hectares burned in the provinces of Ávila and Toledo. In the Valencia region, a fire at Vall d'Uixó covered almost 4,500 hectares, injured at least 19 people through smoke inhalation on 26 July and forced more than 16,000 to leave, most of them housed in schools, social centres and church buildings.

In France, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez put the area burned since the start of 2026 at 115,000 hectares, twice the surface of Warsaw, and called that total exceptional compared with previous years. The Gironde fire, burning since Wednesday, has covered 42,000 hectares. The Guardian, citing Bordeaux's mayor, places the front 25 to 30 kilometres from the city; FAZ reports it approached to within 15 kilometres. Around 220,000 people in Gironde are covered by evacuation orders and nearly 260,000 across France, including 36,000 in the Landes. Eighty-four firefighters have been injured, ten of them evacuated. Deployed in Gironde are about 2,500 firefighters including a Swiss team, 1,500 military personnel, roughly 1,200 police, 450 civil security volunteers and 18 water bombers; Germany sent two transport helicopters and an A400M on Monday for an initial five days. The Bordeaux prosecutor's office reported three men detained, two over the use of fireworks and one over the deliberate setting of scrubland alight. The New York Times reports more than 200 homes destroyed.

Portugal was hit from Monday, with more than a thousand responders and about twenty aircraft against fires near Braga and Bragança in the north and Santarém in the centre, at temperatures around 39 degrees and maximum or very high fire danger across almost the whole country.

The camps

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on Sunday that Spain and the Iberian peninsula were suffering the effects of the climate emergency and spoke of "difficult hours". In France, President Emmanuel Macron told the command post in Bordeaux that the smaller of the two fires there was under control and that "we will win this fight to protect the population", and chaired a crisis meeting on Monday alongside ministry talks with tourism, telecommunications, energy and insurance representatives. The prefect of Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Sophie Brocas, described the fire's unpredictability as a phenomenon never seen before in France and urged tourists to stay away or leave.

That instruction is contested locally: the head of the Gironde chamber of commerce, Patrick Seguin, told BFMTV the season was over and called it a heavy blow for a department dominated by tourism. Sébastien Bouvier of the CFDT union said firefighters lacked adequate equipment against the fires' toxic fumes. Ecology Minister Monique Barbut insisted that respecting water restrictions is a duty rather than a choice, after the farming union Coordination Rurale called on growers last week to ignore irrigation bans.

The view from outside

Outlets outside the affected states largely converge on the scale rather than on blame. Rzeczpospolita in Poland leads on the official French figures and translates them into area comparisons, and gives the most detailed account of the Spanish civil protection numbers. Koha in Kosovo foregrounds the combined 375,000 evacuees and Sánchez's climate framing. The New York Times emphasises that this is the fourth heat wave to affect Europe since May and points to a separate risk around Bordeaux, where many plants work with hazardous materials and advanced technologies. FAZ, from Germany, argues in commentary that climate change is only one factor, alongside abandoned fields and scrubbing over, unmanaged forests, monocultures, weak fire surveillance and under-equipped fire services, and describes Europe as having entered an era of drought and fire.

What's new

Earlier in the week the evacuation total across France and Spain was reported at more than 300,000, with 42,000 hectares burned in Gironde; that department figure has held while the overall displacement count has risen to about 375,000. The direction of travel now differs by country: fires west of Madrid are gradually being brought under control, while the Gironde fire remained broadly stable overnight but uncontained into a fifth night. Portugal is newly affected, having been largely spared in recent weeks. Weather services expect a further heat wave from Tuesday with up to 40 degrees in places. Le Monde reports the ecology ministry's assessment that this year's drought will cost more than the 5.6 billion euros estimated for 2022, which included 3.5 billion for clay-shrinkage cracks in houses, 1.1 billion in lost agricultural output and a 20 percent fall in hydropower, with wildfire costs to be added on top. France currently has 99 departments under water monitoring, 62 of them classed as in crisis.

What could happen next

If the forecast heat and wind arrive as expected, the Gironde fire could resume its erratic advance toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area, which would extend evacuation orders further and put the industrial sites in the surrounding area into the calculation, though the mayor has said an evacuation of the city itself is not being considered.

Alternatively, the stabilisation reported since Monday night could hold as firebreaks cut through the forest take effect and foreign reinforcements arrive, allowing a phased return of residents and a shift from firefighting to damage assessment, insurance claims and the dispute over whether the tourist season can be salvaged.

A third line runs past the fire season itself: with 62 French departments already in water crisis and a drought bill expected above 2022's, the argument over irrigation restrictions and over land and forest management could harden into a longer political conflict in both France and Spain.