Three fires merged outside Madrid and Spain reached for an emergency power it had never used
About 110,000 people fled the French Atlantic coast as fires merged west of Madrid and Europe passed its two-decade burn average in July.
Spain has been fighting summer wildfires for as long as anyone can remember. This week it declared a national emergency over one for the first time in its history.
Two major fires west of Madrid merged into a single front that had burned through 30 square kilometres by Friday. A third, in Ávila province, was on the verge of joining them.
More than 19,000 people were ordered out of towns in the mountains west of the capital, with about 60,000 across Madrid and Ávila displaced or confined to their homes.
In one development alone, 43 houses were destroyed.
The emergency declaration handed direct coordination to the interior ministry and put the Military Emergency Unit in charge of the ground. It also unlocked federal money.
More than 2000 personnel and 10 aircraft could not stop the fires converging.
On France's Atlantic coast, authorities ordered the total evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula — a tourist strip at the height of the season.
About 110,000 people fled across the Gironde region. Boats ran off four piers, ferrying holidaymakers and residents to Arcachon by water taxi, because the fire threatened to cut the only road out.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said the Cap Ferret blaze had crossed 140 square kilometres and was now moving east, towards Bordeaux.
“We learned in the middle of the afternoon that, following the wind shift, it had become a large, self-sustaining fire that is extremely difficult to bring under control,” he said.
A second fire, which started at Saumos to the north, has destroyed more than 100 homes and a campsite.
Emmanuel Macron activated the government's crisis unit and ordered the armed forces to reinforce civilian services. Croatia, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are sending aircraft. Italy and Greece are sending planes to Spain.
Nuñez said France had 32 active fires and more than 50,000 hectares burned since January.
Spain has had more than 29 major fires this year, across an area five times larger than at the same point in 2025 — and 2025 set the record.
Across the European Union, about twice as much land had burned by 22 July as the two-decade average for that date.
It is July. The continent is warming faster than any other on earth, and it has already burned through more than a normal year.
The reprieve in France lasts the weekend. Then the temperatures climb again.