By Michael Francis Gore and Stephane Mahe
NAVALUENGA, Spain/LEGE-CAP-FERRET, France, July 24 (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of people fled wildfires in southwest France by car and boat on Friday and Spain declared a national emergency as huge blazes merged outside Madrid and searing heat left tinder-dry conditions across Europe.
French authorities ordered the total evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula, a tourism hotspot on the Atlantic Coast. Two fires came together into one outside Madrid, and a third was on the verge of joining them, government officials said.
Both countries sought help from the European Union as the blazes strained firefighting and other emergency services. The national emergency – the first of ever issued over a wildfire in Spain – opened up federal funding to tackle the crisis.
“This is the worst wildfire in our region’s history,” Madrid’s regional leader Isabel Diaz Ayuso said after telling reporters the fires had merged. “It’s the perfect storm of very high temperatures and ceaseless winds that aren’t letting up.”
THE CLOUDS BECAME ‘DARKER AND DARKER’
In France, authorities sent boats to help the evacuation and a total of around 63,000 people were told to get out, officials said. Close by, in the town of Biscarrosse, another large fire threatened homes.
“From our home, we had a view of the fires … We could see the clouds becoming darker and darker,” said Yoan Urien, who left late on Thursday after police told everyone in his neighbourhood to leave.
“I was able to find somewhere to take shelter with my pets, but … it’s quite a shock,” the 26-year-old told Reuters.
A fire that began in Saumos, north of Cap Ferret, is threatening to cut off the only road out of the peninsula and is the largest so far this season in France, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told local television.
It has torn through 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres) of forest and burned 80 homes, completely destroying about 50 of them, he said.
‘NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT’
In Spain, more than 19,000 people were ordered to evacuate from towns in the mountains west of Madrid, as more than 2,000 personnel and 10 aircraft struggled in vain to prevent the fires converging, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said.
A third fire in Avila province was on the verge or may have already merged with the two in Madrid, Nicanor Sen, the government representative for the Castile and Leon region, told reporters.
The area west of Madrid, where many residents from the capital have second homes, is densely populated. In just one development 43 homes had been destroyed, a Madrid official said.
That played a role in the government decision to declare a national emergency, allowing it to better coordinate the response, Grande-Marlaska said.
The last time Spain declared the same level of emergency alert was during a massive nationwide power blackout last year.
In Navaluenga in Avila province, local residents wearing masks because of the smoke stood watching firefighting helicopters scoop up water from the town’s river.
“I’ve lived here for 36 years and I’ve never seen anything like it. Nor did I expect it. I thought they were going to get it under control last night, but it was already late, and it was all out of control,” local resident Javier Martin told Reuters.
It is the second consecutive year that Spain has faced a particularly destructive fire season.
More than 29 major fires have broken out in Spain so far this year, damaging a surface area five times greater than at the same stage in 2025, when a record area was destroyed, Environment Minister Sara Aagesen said in a social media post.
HEAT HITS CROPS, NUCLEAR PLANT COOLING
Greece was sending two CL-415 firefighting aircraft to Madrid and will operate across the area of Toledo, the Greek civil protection ministry said.
Croatia said it sent on Friday a Canadair CL-415 firefighting aircraft with two crews and 11 Croatian army technical staff to help France battle fires.
After a short reprieve over the weekend, average temperatures in France are expected to rise sharply again next week, according to Global Forecast System data compiled by LSEG. The high temperatures are expected to warm French rivers that are used to cool nuclear reactors and could lead to further restrictions, as the reactors reduce output to comply with environmental protection measures. The Golfech 2 nuclear reactor in southern France has remained offline since July 7 due to heat-related restrictions, operator EDF’s data showed.
Weeks of hot weather are also taking a toll on the condition of the maize crop in France, the EU’s largest grain producer, farm office FranceAgriMer said on Friday.
(Additional reporting by Manuel Ausloos, Coralie Lamarque, Liu Zhifan, Forrest Crellin, Inti Landauro, Ingrid Melander, Camille Raynaud, Guillermo Martinez, Violeta Santos Moura, David Latona and Emma Pinedo; Writing by Charlie Devereux; Editing by Helen Popper and Andrew Heavens)
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