Firefighters in Spain and France were racing against the clock on Tuesday to keep ferocious wildfires near Madrid and Bordeaux in check before a scorching heat wave hits the area, which could worsen the largest blazes the countries have faced in their modern history.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain offered a mix of optimism and caution, saying firefighters were “turning the tide” against the wildfires in the Madrid region and the surrounding areas. “We are beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel,” he said, even as he warned that “difficult, critical hours” still lay ahead.
“A new heat wave will obviously hinder firefighting efforts and increase the risk of further fires across the country,” he said at a Tuesday news conference in Madrid.
Temperatures in parts of France and Spain are expected to climb to 104 degrees Fahrenheit, or 40 degrees Celsius, this week — the latest in a succession of extreme heat events that have dried out vegetation, combining with strong winds to increase the risk of fires spreading.
The fires in France and Spain have consumed scores of houses and burned hundreds of thousands of acres of land, highlighting the challenge faced by Europe as summers grow increasingly hot and wildfires become more widespread. Flames have come unsettlingly close to the Spanish capital and to Bordeaux, which is France’s sixth-largest city and a famed center of its wine industry.
On Tuesday morning, officials in Spain said the wildfires had been mostly contained overnight, thanks to milder temperatures.
“It has been a positive night,” Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Spain’s interior minister, told the Spanish public broadcaster. “Today we can rest a bit easier, given the weather conditions we will be facing in the coming hours,” he said.
Another wildfire is raging in the Castellón region of Spain, near Valencia. Ximo Llopis, the mayor of La Llosa, a local village, helped to evacuate Vilavella, a nearby town that was in the path of the fire. “It was truly an ordeal, a real inferno,” he said on Monday.
“Right now, more than anything, we just want it put out so it doesn’t do any more damage,” he added.
In France, a fire in the southwestern Landes region was brought under control. But officials said they feared that the one in the Gironde region, near Bordeaux, which had stopped progressing on Sunday, could quickly pick up again.
In a sign of that volatility, officials in the town of Lège-Cap Ferret — on an Atlantic peninsula that was one of the first areas to evacuate residents and vacationers last week — said on Tuesday that there had been a “significant” flare-up west of the town.
“For your safety, it is imperative that you do not travel to the town,” read a post on Lège-Cap Ferret’s official Facebook page.
France and Spain have continued to preventively evacuate people from the threatened areas. On Tuesday, the city of Lacanau, on France’s Atlantic coast, ordered the evacuation of all camping sites, tourist accommodations and vacation villages.
More than 220,000 people have been evacuated in recent days in the Gironde region, which is facing the largest fire. In the Landes region, 31,000 people were evacuated, but 15,000 were later allowed to return.
“We need to realize that we’re facing a totally unprecedented fire,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said on Monday of the Gironde blaze as he visited a local fire department, adding that it was the worst since World War II. He warned that the fire could take weeks to extinguish. Nearly 90 firefighters have been injured in the Gironde fire.
In Spain, about 425,000 acres have burned so far in 2026, Mr. Sánchez said on Monday — more than six times the amount at this point last year. More than 100,000 people in the Madrid region and the surrounding areas, as well as in Castellón, have been ordered to flee their homes or take shelter.
Nules, a town north of Valencia, has taken in scores of people evacuated because of the fire near there, which has scorched more than 21,000 acres so far.
Volunteers in blue vests were feeding hundreds of people a day in a local sports hall, where evacuees could rest and cool off. On Monday, the Serra d’Espadà mountain range rose in the distance under a haze of smoke, as firefighting seaplanes regularly flew by.
“We’re OK,” said Rosa Pitarch, an evacuee from Artana, a nearby town. “It’s just that we’re eager to go home.”
Francisco Sánchez Sabater, 49, said he had been napping at his home in Vilavella when the fire caught him by surprise. The flames were less than 200 feet away, he said.
“If the Guardia Civil hadn’t banged on my door to wake me up, they would have found me dead,” he said on Monday. Police officers told him to grab whatever he could.
“I even left my phone inside the house,” he said. “I ran out, and I walked, and I walked, and I walked downhill, toward the town of Nules. Every so often I’d turn around, and the smoke was already hanging over the town.”
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