A large fire that burned nearly 30,000 hectares of forest was brought under control on Monday in the Sierra de la Culebra, in northwestern Spain, local authorities announced. This fire broke out on Wednesday in the midst of an exceptional heat wave in the country and is now “under control”, announced the Castile and Leon region on Twitter. With 30,000 hectares gone up in smoke, this fire is the largest in Spain since 2004, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), an environmental NGO.
The fire had forced the authorities to evacuate 14 villages with several hundred inhabitants, authorized to return home on Sunday in the face of the improvement in the situation. Spanish firefighters also continued to fight several fires on Monday in Catalonia (northeast) and Navarre (north).
More than 40°C on Sunday
In Spain, temperatures began to decline on Sunday in most of the country, after a suffocating week where 40°C were often exceeded. Temperatures were expected to reach only 28°C in Madrid on Monday and 23°C in the province of Zamora (northwest), according to the Spanish Meteorological Agency.
Spain, which this year experienced its hottest May since the turn of the century, according to the meteorological agency, has already gone through four episodes of extreme temperatures over the past 10 months, including the current heat wave. The multiplication of heat waves, particularly in Europe, is a direct consequence of global warming, explain the scientists, with greenhouse gas emissions increasing both the intensity, duration and frequency of these phenomena.