Madrid: Firefighters in Spain, Portugal and Greece continued to battle wildfires Friday on a
public holiday in all three countries as persistent hot, dry conditions challenged efforts to contain the blazes.
Spain was fighting 14 major fires. Temperatures were expected to climb over the weekend.
“Today will once again be a very tough day, with an extreme risk of new fires,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on X. The national weather agency AEMET warned of extreme fire risk in most of the country, including where the largest blazes were burning in the north and west.
A heat wave which brought temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius on several days this month was expected to last through Monday.
Fires in the Galicia region forced the closure of several highways.
The high speed rail line connecting it to Spain’s capital, Madrid, remained suspended.
The fires in Spain this year have burned 1,58,000 hectares or 610 square miles, according to the European Union’s European Forest Fire Information System. That is an area roughly as big as
metropolitan London.