More than 300,000 people have been driven from their homes by wildfires in France and Spain, and the European Union’s own satellite monitoring service now puts France’s burnt area for 2026 at more than six times its long-run average. The Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System, which maps fires of roughly 30 hectares or larger, records 91,265 hectares burned in France this year against an annual average of 14,755.85 hectares over the two decades to 2025 — a factor of 6.2, and 0.17% of French territory against a normal 0.03%.
The heaviest displacement is in the French south-west. The BBC reported about 250,000 people evacuated across Gironde and Landes after a further 55,000 were ordered out late on Saturday, with the fires reaching the outskirts of Bordeaux and the city’s exhibition centre pressed into service as a shelter. Euronews put the French burnt area at 42,000 hectares, with 88 firefighters injured and a response of 2,750 firefighters, 1,500 soldiers, 1,440 police and gendarmes and 18 aircraft. One fire captain described conditions to AFP as “erratic and unmanageable”, the blaze generating “its own winds — complete with whirlwinds”.
Spain has declared a state of emergency. Its interior ministry said nearly 60,000 people had been evacuated from the Madrid and Ávila regions with more than 28,000 confined to their homes, and at least eight municipalities near Toledo were ordered out late on Saturday. Euronews reported a higher Spanish figure of 76,000 evacuated plus 30,000 confined. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez warned of “complex times ahead”.
One death has been confirmed. Authorities in Valencia said a man, believed to be in his seventies, was found dead in his car as firefighters put out a blaze in the Salt de l’Aigua ravine at Manises on Saturday.
The EFFIS figures also show how narrow this season is. Italy is at 67,456 hectares against an average of 57,226.50, barely above normal. Portugal has burned 30,426 hectares against an average of 105,488.20, and Greece 2,092 against 50,193.30 — both far below their long-run figures. The countries that have dominated Europe’s fire coverage for a decade are, this year, comparatively quiet, while France is having its worst season in the twenty years the dataset covers.
Two counts of Spain’s season are in circulation, and they do not agree. Sánchez said 130,000 hectares had burned in Spain so far this year, against what he described as an annual average of 100,000. EFFIS puts Spain at 208,286 hectares against an average of 95,245.55. The gap is not a contradiction so much as two systems measuring different things: EFFIS maps burn scars from satellite imagery for fires above about 30 hectares on a common European method, while national totals are compiled from ground reporting by regional forestry services. The lesson from earlier reporting on divergent case counts applies here too — check whether two numbers are counting the same population before treating the difference as a dispute.
The trajectory over three days has been steep. When we reported on this fire complex on Sunday, the confirmed total was 267,000 evacuated and France had just set a national burn record. Al Jazeera carried a figure of more than 325,000 in the body of a Sunday report under a headline claiming more than 360,000; the BBC and CNBC both settled on more than 300,000 on Monday. The number is moving fast enough that it is worth attaching a source and a time to any version of it.
What happens next is scheduled rather than settled. President Emmanuel Macron is due to hold a crisis cabinet meeting on Monday, with the French government describing some 30 fires burning across the country as a wholly unprecedented situation. Sánchez was expected to visit the fire-hit areas of Valencia. Forecasters expect a third heatwave of the month to build across the region during the week.