Outdoor fire
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Event title
Spain - Spain fights to ‘save lives’ as wildfires rage near Madrid
Source
Severity
High
Event date (UTC)
2026-07-25 06:06:37
Last update (UTC)
2026-07-28 15:34:55
Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Saturday firefighters were working to “save lives” in the wildfires raging west of Madrid, warning of a “complex” struggle with high winds expected.The fires in the parched countryside have forced 70,000 people to flee their homes, the government said, in what officials have called the region’s worst fire on record.“Our priority, our thinking, our aim is for your lives, to save your lives and protect inhabited areas,” Sanchez told reporters in the village of Cenicientos in the fire zone.“We are going to have some complex hours ahead because although the temperatures have gone down, we do not know exactly how the wind will develop, how strong it will be.”In the town of Brunete, local mayor Mar Nicolas told AFP she was “very worried for the residents who are suffering from these terrible fires”.“Every year there are fires, but this one has been tremendous,” she said. “It is a catastrophe.”Thick grey smoke filled the sky west of the capital and the smell of burning reached the streets of central Madrid in the morning, itching residents’ throats and forcing them to keep their windows closed. The health ministry on X advised people to avoid staying outside for long periods because of bad air quality.Evacuees from surrounding villages sheltered in sports halls around the capital.Jacqueline Villafranca, 38, from Peru, told AFP she was evacuated in about an hour on Friday evening from the village of Navalagamella.When the fire alerts sounded on telephones, “I thought everything was going to burn, the house and everything,” she said.She was brought by coach with her husband and two daughters, aged 16 and two, to the northern Madrid suburb of Alcobendas, where they sat dozing and eating snacks in a municipal gymnasium.
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