By Michael Francis Gore, Charlie Devereux and Ana Cantero
VILLANUEVA DE LA SIERRA, Spain (Reuters) -Spain battled 14 major fires driven by high winds and aggravated by heat on Friday as authorities warned of “unfavourable conditions” to tackle flames that have already killed seven people and burned an area the size of London.
Firefighters have been battling to put out blazes across southern Europe in one of the worst summers for wildfires in 20 years. And a nearly two-week heatwave and southerly winds were worsening the situation in Spain, Virginia Barcones, director general of emergency services, said on Friday.
“In the western part of the country the situation is extremely worrying,” Barcones said on RTVE.
In Galicia, several fires converged to form a large blaze, forcing the closure of highways and rail services to the region.
As fire spread from Galicia’s Ourense province to neighbouring Zamora, provoking evacuations, some stayed behind to protect their homes.
“We are waiting for the fire to come down to try and stop it, so it does not get to the houses,” Loli Baz, 52, told Reuters from the village of Villanueva de la Sierra in Zamora.
Spain’s national weather agency AEMET warned of extreme fire risk in the north and west of the country, as temperatures are expected to reach up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) on the north coast.
“Today will be another very difficult day, with an extreme risk of new fires,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on X.
FIRES SPREADING QUICKLY
A fire near Molezuelas de la Carballeda in the Castile and Leon region – one of the largest in Spain’s history – had not advanced since Thursday.
That wildfire had, at one point, been spreading by 4,000 hectares (15.4 square miles) per hour, said Eduardo Diego, national government representative for the region.
A fire near Badajoz in the Extremadura region, meanwhile, burned 2,500 hectares in a few hours before being brought under control.
“It was very fast with enormous growth, but it has been possible to tackle it,” Jose Luis Quintana, the national government representative for the region, told RTVE.
The fires caused the closure of more than half a dozen roads on a busy bank holiday weekend, leaving travelers stuck at the height of summer holidays.
In the town of Oimbra in Ourense province, where three firefighters were seriously injured, a man was arrested for causing a fire by using his tractor when it was prohibited, police said.
Two people were also arrested in Costa da Morte in Galicia for provoking fires by illegally burning copper cables to extract the metal, according to the Interior Ministry.
Wildfires have burned more than 157,000 hectares in Spain so far this year, almost double the annual average, according to the European Union’s Forest Fire Information Service.
In neighbouring Portugal, meanwhile, thousands of firefighters were battling five large blazes in central and northern parts of the country, with one fire in Trancoso, some 350 km northeast of Lisbon, now raging for six days.
Around 300 residents were evacuated on Friday from the village of Covanca near Piodao, an area of central Portugal popular with tourists, after a wildfire broke out on Wednesday.
Portugal has activated the EU mechanism for assistance and requested four Canadair planes, according to civil protection commander Mario Silvestre.
(Reporting by Michale Gore, Charlie Devereux, Ana Cantero and Andrei Khalip; Editing by Toby Chopra and Joe Bavier)
