Spain battles twenty major wildfires amid extreme heatwave

(Patria) - Intense heat hampered efforts on Sunday to contain twenty major wildfires across Spain, prompting the government to deploy an additional five hundred soldiers from the military emergency unit to support firefighting operations, Reuters reported.

In the northwestern region of Galicia, several fires merged to form a large blaze, forcing the closure of highways and railway services in the area.

Southern Europe is experiencing one of its worst wildfire seasons in the last two decades, with Spain among the hardest-hit countries. In the past week alone, fires have claimed three lives and scorched more than 115,000 hectares, while neighbouring Portugal is also battling blazes.

"We still have some challenging days ahead and, unfortunately, the weather is not on our side," Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez told reporters in Ourense, one of the worst-affected areas.

He announced an increase in military reinforcements, bringing the total number of soldiers deployed across Spain to 1,900.

Virginia Barcones, the director general of emergency services, told Spanish public television that temperatures are expected to drop from Tuesday, but for now the weather conditions are "very unfavourable."

"Today we have extremely high temperatures with an extreme risk of fire, which is hampering firefighting efforts," Barcones said.

Data from the Ministry of the Interior shows that 27 people have been arrested and 92 are under investigation on suspicion of arson since June.

In Portugal, wildfires have so far this year burned about 155,000 hectares of vegetation, according to provisional data from the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests ICNF - three times the average for this period between 2006 and 2024. Approximately half of that area has burned in the last three days.

Thousands of firefighters battled eight major fires in central and northern Portugal, the largest of which was near Piodao, a picturesque mountainous area popular with tourists.

Another fire in Trancoso, further north, has been raging for eight days. A smaller fire a few kilometres to the east claimed the life of a local resident on Friday - the first such death this season.