Spain on heat alert as wildfires burn

Three wildfires that scorched more than 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres) in Spain over the weekend were under control Monday but the country remained on high hot weather alert as it faced its third heatwave of the summer.

The regions of Andalusia in the south, the central Castilla-La Mancha and Extremadura in the west were placed on an orange alert with temperatures expected to reach 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) on Monday, according to the national weather agency Aemet.

It is the third summer heatwave to hit the Iberian peninsula, which is expected to last until Thursday.

A fire that broke around 10 kilometres (six miles) from the coastal city of Cadiz, a popular destination for tourists on the Atlantic Ocean, on Sunday had “stabilised” by midnight, the firefighting service Infoca said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Another fire, also under control, blackened some 450 hectares (1,100 acres) near the southwestern city of Huelva between Saturday and Sunday.

In Catalonia, on the Mediterranean coast near the French border, firefighters were working since Friday to extinguish a blaze, an effort that was being complicated by wind gusts.

Catalan fire officials said Monday on X that the blaze was now under control, though around 30 firefighting units were still on site where nearly 600 hectares burned, forest officials said.

Catalonia and Andalusia are the two regions most frequently hit by drought, creating conditions for fires to spark.

More than 70,000 hectares have burned in Spain since the beginning of the year, after a record in 2022 when more than 300,000 hectares were destroyed, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis).

Experts say the greater frequency of heatwaves, which are also increasingly long and intense, is a consequence of climate change.