Spain Declares a National Emergency as Wildfires Force More Than 250,000 From Their Homes Across Spain and France

Spain declared a national emergency over wildfires burning through the countryside west of Madrid on Friday, handing the central government control of firefighting powers that normally belong to its self-governing regions. It is only the second time Spain has invoked the measure, after the countrywide blackout of April 2025. By Saturday, more than 250,000 people had been evacuated or confined in their homes across Spain and France as the two countries fought the worst fire season Western Europe has recorded.

About 70,000 people have been moved out of communities in the Madrid region and neighboring Ávila province, and roughly 88,000 more have been ordered to shelter indoors, according to Spain's Interior Ministry. Twenty-three towns have been evacuated since the fires began, among them Navalagamella, Pelayos de la Presa and El Tiemblo. The two largest blazes are at Navaluenga in Ávila, which has burned about 22,000 hectares, and at San Martín de Valdeiglesias in Madrid, at roughly 14,500 hectares. Fire crews reported the two fronts touching along a nine-mile strip between the provinces. One person has died, in Manises.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez warned that the country faces "a complex fight" in the coming days. Spain has already lost about 130,000 hectares to fire in 2026, against a ten-year annual average of roughly 100,000 hectares, and the year is only halfway through its fire season. Madrid's regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, described the blaze bearing down on the sierra as the worst fire in the history of the region.

France is fighting a fire of its own scale. At least 197,000 people have been evacuated around the Arcachon Basin and the suburbs of Bordeaux, in the Gironde, with fires burning through communes including Saumos, Arès and Saint-Médard-en-Jalles. Nearly 242,000 acres have been ravaged, a historic record for the country and an area close to ten times the size of Paris. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez called it probably the biggest peacetime evacuation France has seen. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described the fires as unprecedented and said one blaze had grown large enough to generate its own winds. No deaths have been reported in France, though dozens of firefighters have been injured.

France has deployed 1,000 soldiers and 100 firefighters from the Paris brigade to the southwest, along with an experimental A400M military transport modified to drop 20 tons of fire retardant. Emergency shelters have been opened in schools and gymnasiums. The final stage of the Tour de France was shortened because of the fires.

European neighbors are moving aircraft across borders. Italy sent two Canadair water-bombers to Spain, and Spain's civil protection service expected two more from Greece on Saturday, joining planes already flown in from the Netherlands and Portugal. Croatia, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have sent planes and helicopters to France.

Both countries have been under repeated heat waves since May, drying vegetation to the point that fires that would normally be containable have merged into single fronts that firefighters cannot get in front of. Across the European Union, the area burned in 2026 is the second largest on record.