Wildfires force mass evacuations in France and Spain as blaze nears Bordeaux and Madrid

Wildfires are continuing to engulf large areas of western France and central Spain, forcing more than 250,000 people to flee as flames spread near Bordeaux and Madrid.

Firefighters said the blazes, among the largest recorded in both countries in recent years, are so large that they cannot be tackled directly.

In Spain, the Interior Ministry said a man was killed in a wildfire in Manises, near Valencia. Local authorities said firefighters brought the blaze under control but that it had claimed one life. The body was found in a car in a ravine.

Two French firefighters died earlier this week near Bordeaux, and one firefighter died in Sicily, Italy, which is also battling blazes.

On France's Atlantic coast, 44,000 people were removed from the Cap Ferret peninsula, many of them by boat. Towns near Bordeaux were evacuated as a precaution as strong winds pushed flames toward the area. On Saturday morning, regional authorities ordered the evacuation of three western suburbs of the city to protect residents.

French authorities said more than 197,000 people have been evacuated in the western Gironde and Landes departments. In Spain, the Interior Ministry said 70,000 people have been forced to flee.

Authorities in France said the country's two main blazes were sparked accidentally, but that summers are becoming drier and hotter and the scale of such fires has increased sharply. French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said a wind shift had turned the Cap Ferret blaze into a large, self-sustaining fire that was extremely difficult to bring under control. He said it was moving east toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area and that the response would be reorganized so firefighters could fight it from the ground and stop it from advancing.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for European Union assistance and the mobilization of the French army to halt the fires, which have destroyed 22,000 hectares of land. The European Commission said it is sending three firefighting aircraft to France and four to Spain.

This week's fires have injured dozens of firefighters and killed three of them — two in western France and one in Sicily. The Tour de France has been shortened and will be effectively limited to Paris on Sunday because emergency services are needed for the fires.

In Spain, the government declared a national emergency as two of the country's three current fires near Madrid merged into one. Madrid's regional emergency management services said the blaze had reached its peak and was beyond the capacity of firefighters to contain.

The largest active fire in the region, in Guadalajara province, has burned about 32,000 hectares. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez visited affected areas west of Madrid on Saturday and said the priority was to save lives as temperatures rose above 37 degrees Celsius.

NASA said it had evacuated its Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex in the region. The facility is one of three worldwide that allow the agency to communicate with spacecraft in distant parts of space.

Spain, which regularly sees wildfires, has had an especially severe summer. Earlier this month, fires in the south of the country killed 13 people. Environmental officials said 1,140 square kilometers have already burned this year, more than five times the area burned in the first half of 2025.