Wildfires continue to burn in Europe, with hundreds of thousands displaced in France and Spain.
At least one person has died, and more than 250,000 people have been forced to flee parts of Western Europe on Saturday as out-of-control wildfires continued to rage in Spain and France.
Thick black ash coated roof terraces in the north of Madrid’s center, the Spanish capital, where 70,000 people were evacuated as residents were forced to keep their windows closed by the smell of throat-irritating smoke.
One person was killed in the town of Manises in Spain, according to local authorities.
“Unfortunately, the fire has claimed the life of one person,” the Manises City Council said in a post on X.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, visiting the fire zone near Madrid, said the priority was to “save lives” while warning that a “complex” fight lay ahead. His government declared a national emergency.
Fires have burned 130,000 hectares of forest already this year in Spain, up from an annual average of 100,000 hectares over the past decade, Sanchez said. He said more favorable weather on Saturday offered “a window of opportunity” for fire crews to bring the blazes under control.
“We are going to have some complex hours ahead because although the temperatures have gone down, we do not know exactly how the wind will develop, how strong it will be,” he said.
Among those who fled from a suburban town was audiovisual technician Luis, who had spent the afternoon helping evacuees from the village of Pelayos de la Presa when he received the order to evacuate.
“I cried at first because it’s where I grew up. But now, it’s more a feeling of anger and resignation, because there’s nothing we can do as long as we’re not allowed to go back and see what we’ll find there,” he told AFPTV.
A picture taken on July 25, 2026, in El Tiemblo, west of Madrid, shows a wildfire restarting in a forest next to the La Atalaya residential area, amid wildfires that have burned up to 25,000 hectares.
Jacqueline Villafranca, a 38-year-old originally from Peru who evacuated to Madrid on Friday with her husband and their two daughters, said when smoke filled her village of Navalagamella, “I thought everything was going to burn, the house and everything.”
“Here you can breathe normally — yesterday it was unbearable,” she said, sitting in a gymnasium-turned-shelter.
Among those who fled from a suburban town was audiovisual technician Luis, who had spent the afternoon helping evacuees from the village of Pelayos de la Presa when he received the order to evacuate.
“I cried at first because it’s where I grew up. But now, it’s more a feeling of anger and resignation, because there’s nothing we can do as long as we’re not allowed to go back and see what we’ll find there,” he told AFPTV.
CBS
