Firefighters prepare to join efforts to contain the vast wildfire in the Gironde region in south-west France. Photograph: Astrid Lagougne/EPAView image in fullscreenFirefighters prepare to join efforts to contain the vast wildfire in the Gironde region in south-west France. Photograph: Astrid Lagougne/EPAFirefighters in France battle to prevent huge blaze from approaching BordeauxEfforts to contain wildfire that has consumed an area of four times the size of Paris impeded by windy conditions
Authorities are battling to contain a huge wildfire near Bordeaux in south-west France that has consumed an area of land four times the size of Paris.
Efforts to extinguish the blaze in the Gironde region, where nearly 220,000 people have been evacuated, were hampered by windy conditions on Saturday night.
In Spain, fires west of Madrid were being brought under control, but the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez spoke of “difficult hours” ahead, saying the country was suffering the effects of the climate emergency.
Wildfires have forced more than 375,000 people to flee their homes in France and Spain.
0:59Firefighters in Spain and France battle raging wildfires – videoBordeaux’s mayor, Thomas Cazenave, described the Gironde blaze as being “at the gates of the metropolitan area”, between 15 and 20 miles (25 and 30km) from the city itself, which has a population of 268,000. An evacuation of the city was not on the cards, he said.
Nearly 260,000 people have been evacuated across France as a whole, including 36,000 ordered to leave another wildfire zone in the Landes region further south earlier this week.
The country’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said on Sunday that the previous night had been difficult and “the situation remains very unfavourable”. He said the Gironde fire had become “extremely virulent and unpredictable again” early on Saturday night, generating its own wind and spreading erratically towards the Bordeaux metropolitan area. It had become calmer by the end of the night, he said.
About 2,500 firefighters, including a Swiss team, 1,500 military personnel and about 1,200 police had been deployed to Gironde, Nuñez said, as he praised the contribution of 450 volunteers from civil security organisations.
View image in fullscreenA drone view of an area burned by the wildfire in the village of Le Porge, Gironde. Photograph: Manon Cruz/ReutersHe said another five Gironde municipalities had been evacuated overnight.
One firefighter told Agence France-Presse that the fire was so virulent it had formed a pyrocumulonimbus, a fire-generated thunderstorm that “creates its own wind, with whirlwinds, becoming erratic and uncontrollable”.
The French prime minister, Sébastian Lecornu, had warned late on Saturday that the coming hours would be difficult as the weather changed. “France is facing a historic situation,” he wrote on X. “Nearly 100,000 hectares have already burned, an unprecedented level and around thirty fires are simultaneously active across the territory.”
Three men were arrested in Gironde on Saturday on suspicion of endangering lives. Two of them were accused of setting off fireworks.
Authorities in Spain said major areas of fire near Madrid had been contained, but Sánchez said: “We’re facing some difficult hours, although it’s true that the latest update has shown that last night was very positive in terms of the fire’s evolution and efforts to control it.”
View image in fullscreenSmoke rises from a wildfire near San Martin de Valdeiglesias, west of Madrid. Photograph: Ana Beltran/ReutersHe said Spain and neighbouring Portugal were experiencing the varied consequences of the climate emergency, from fires and storms to heavy snowfalls. “The entire Iberian peninsula is suffering the effects of the climate emergency in a very specific way,” he said.
Major areas of the fire near Madrid had been “contained and cooled down”, according to a senior officer with Spain’s military emergencies unit.
Lt Col Alfonso Arribas told the state broadcaster, RTVE, on Sunday morning that important strides had been made in containing the blaze.
While the fire near Madrid was being brought under control, emergency workers battled to extinguish a new fire near the Mediterannean port city of Valencia, where at least 15,000 people were evacuated. “The fire is beyond our capacity to extinguish, it has a perimeter of about 21 kilometres,” the Valencia region’s president, Juanfran Pérez Llorca, said late on Saturday.
0:57Spain wildfire burns 'out of extinguishing capacity' as fires engulf parts of Europe – videoAuthorities also ordered the evacuation of eight more municipalities near Toledo south of Madrid on Saturday, bringing the number of people forced to flee their homes by wildfires in Spain in recent days to 116,000. The situation prompted the government to declare a national emergency over a wildfire for the first time.
Spain’s interior ministry said on Saturday evening that a man had died in a fire in the Valencian town of Manises. He had been found in a car in a ravine, officials said.
The blazes are the latest episode in a summer of wildfires that threaten to burn an unprecedented expanse of land. Europe has endured a series of heatwaves since the spring, fuelled by the climate crisis, including the hottest-ever June, leaving vegetation tinder dry.
The EU commissioner for crisis management, Hadja Lahbib, told the BBC it was likely that damage from wildfires would exceed previous records. “Last year, one million hectares burned during the summer and so we are expecting to face another historical, sad record because the season has started earlier in the year,” she said.
“Forecasters are predicting, unfortunately, another heatwave so we can expect other wildfires.”
Spain’s environment ministry said 32 major fires affecting 152,678 hectares had been recorded so far in 2026, compared with seven affecting 24,133 hectares in the same period in 2025.
The Gironde fire in France has so far burned 42,000 hectares, an area four times the size of Paris and one of the biggest devastations of land since the second world war.
At least 240 homes had been destroyed and many more damaged, a gendarme told BFMTV.
Firefighters are battling to slow the fires progression toward Bordeaux from the on the ground and air, with planes dropping water and retardants. Jérôme Steffe, the mayor of Cestas commune, 10 miles from Bordeaux city centre, told French media: “We are working together to put in place a firewall to block the advance of the flames.”
An exhibition centre in Bordeaux has been turned into an emergency shelter, providing camp beds and food for thousands of people, including hundreds of older people evacuated from care homes.
Cazenave said he had asked the central government for an economic crisis plan for the area because many businesses and workers had been evacuated from areas west of Bordeaux and the tourism industry had been heavily affected. He said it was impossible to say when people evacuated as a precaution could return to their homes.
“We don’t know how long this crisis will last, whether several days or several weeks,” he said.
The Landes fire has consumed 3,600 hectares and a rekindling of flames on Saturday had to be tackled from the air Nuñez said. French authorities are also dealing with wildfires in the south-eastern Var region, where 3,000 people have been evacuated, as well as the High Alps and Corsica.
