Firefighters on Monday continued to battle blazes in various parts of Spain, with more than 90,000 people still evacuated or confined in Ávila, Toledo and Madrid.
Spanish authorities said they planned to start to allow some people evacuated from wildfires near Madrid to return on Monday, in a sign of progress in fighting what’s been referred to in the Spanish press as the worst wildfire season in the country’s history.
Francisco Martín Aguirre, a government delegate for the Madrid region, told reporters late Sunday that authorities planned to reopen a campsite where 4,500 people had been evacuated and also allow elderly residents back home in another area.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will visit fire-hit areas in Valencia, in the east of the country on Monday where firefighters are battling a new blaze and where 15,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.
On Sunday, during a visit to the fire zone in Ávila province west of Madrid, he warned: “Difficult hours lie ahead.”
The Ávila fire is now the most destructive in Spanish history, with 50,000 hectares burned.
Spain’s Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said Sunday evening the fires were advancing, but slowly.
Earlier Sunday, civil protection chief Virginia Barcones, describing the fire around Avila, said the country was battling a “monster”.
“We are dealing with a perimeter of 280 kilometres encompassing 77,000 hectares (190,000 acres),” Barcones told state broadcaster TVE of the wildfire.
King Felipe VI, visiting an emergency shelter in Villamanta on Madrid’s western outskirts, said the wildfires had caused “incalculable” damage to Spain’s natural heritage.
Around 75,000 residents have been evacuated from the Madrid region, Avila, Toledo and from the eastern region of Castellon in Valencia.
“We had a real scare,” said Azucena Paguada, one of those evacuated to the Villamanta gym-turned-shelter.
“The Guardia Civil came to our house and made us leave, telling us we were in danger.”
Another evacuee, 70-year-old Margarita, showed the stains on her T-shirt, which she has been wearing for four days.
“The queen came to say hello, and I was wearing this dirty thing,” she added with a sigh.
Officials said winds were pushing wildfires near Madrid to the south, away from the capital for now, but forcing more evacuations of villages in their path.
Hundreds of kilometres away, the new Valencia fire was proving “very intense”, Pilar Bernabe, the central government delegate to Valencia, wrote on X.
A separate, smaller fire near Valencia killed one person on Saturday, the only civilian death reported so far in the wildfires. In France, two firefighters died near Bordeaux on Tuesday.
With additional reporting by The Local Spain’s Alex Dunham.
