While France has managed to contain its wildfires in the Bordeaux region and in the southeast, Greece struggles to stop the multiple fires in the greater Athens region and on the Cephalonia island.
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Strong winds have been spreading the fires across the country for days, which have dramatically increased the damage toll.
Blazes are sparking back up in Spain’s Zamora region and in the eastern region of Castellón, but most of the fires are contained or extinguished.
Winds fueling Greek wildfires
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Greece had faced “extreme weather conditions and winds” that often reached 100 kilometres an hour.
Gale-force winds created “extremely difficult conditions resulting in many cases where aircraft either cannot draw water or cannot carry out drops due to extreme turbulence”, Greece’s Civil Protection Minister Evangelos Tournas said.
For yet another night, fire service units on the ground were battling the flames in regions near Athens (Attica, Boeotia and Fokida) under particularly adverse conditions, as strong winds continue to blow, while shortly before midnight a new front broke out on Cephalonia, an Ionian Sea island.
Though the winds eased late on Saturday, the greater Athens area and nearby Voiotia and the island of Evia were under near maximum fire risk on Sunday, the civil protection ministry said.
Firefighters were attempting to keep the fire from approaching the western outskirts of Athens after it scaled a mountain overnight.
Porto Germeno and other villages were evacuated when the fire broke out on Friday but local authorities say scores of homes were damaged or destroyed.
Earlier this week, fires on the islands of Crete and Paros affected another 6,000 hectares.
Firefighters have faced dozens of fires daily, and Greece’s Civil Protection Minister Evangelos Tournas on Saturday said the fire department had been “pushed to its limits”.
Three firefighters died this week in the line of duty, two in Crete and one in the Peloponnese.
Theodore Giannaros, a wildfire meteorologist and senior researcher at the National Observatory, said the fires around Porto Germeno appear to have affected an area of over 10,000 hectares, almost double the original estimate.
“Unfortunately, it is highly likely (if not almost certain) that this particular wildfire will be classified as a megafire,” Giannaros wrote on Facebook.
By Sunday, wildfires in Greece had devastated over 12,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land.
Hit hard by the climate crisis like the rest of the Mediterranean region, Greece is plagued by wildfires every summer due to high temperatures, frequent heat waves and drought.
France fires ‘contained’
In France, 63,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land were burnt since the beginning of July. The strongest fire in the Gironde region near Bordeaux is now contained and ravaged 42,000 hectares and destroyed 240 homes.
There, said Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, “we have returned to a more stable situation”, confirming earlier comments by Interior Minister Laurent Nunez.
Of the 220,000 people who were evacuated, 208,000 have been able to go back home. It’s the country’s largest wildfire since 1949.
The fire in the southeastern Var region is still under close surveillance. Firefighters there have managed to stem the advance of a fast-moving blaze that sprang up Friday, said regional prefect Simon Babre.
Strong winds fanning the flames had caused them to spread “faster than a galloping horse”, he said, warning that the situation was still “extremely precarious”.
“We’re staying cautious, because the fight goes on,” he added.
France has for weeks been battling wildfires after a series of deadly heatwaves that have dried up riverbeds and vegetation, extreme weather events scientists have linked to human-made climate change.
Across France, police have arrested 308 people in connection with the fires, of whom 33 are being held in custody.
Fires spark back in Spain
Spain continues to grapple with multiple wildfires following the lifting of the national state of emergency declared on Thursday.
In Zamora, northeast Spain, the fire in Fermoselle (11,134 hectares burnt) flared up again on Saturday near Mámoles, but was brought under control thanks to the deployment of seven helicopters and three aeroplanes, and residents have now returned to their homes.
The situation is worsening in León, with a new outbreak in San Tirso, in addition to those in Veguellina (where three villages have been evacuated) and Valdelaloba, the latter of which is showing positive signs.
In Cáceres, a lorry that caught fire on the A-66 sparked a wildfire that led to the precautionary evacuation of 150 people in Grimaldo and 650 in Casas de Millán.
On Sunday, they were allowed to return, although they were required to remain in their homes, after some 1,500 hectares had been burnt.
The major fires in the Sierra Oeste region of Madrid and Ávila (covering more than 70,000 hectares) remain under control.
Finally, in the eastern region of Castellón, the fire in Vall d’Uixó was stabilised on its seventh day, with 9,568 hectares burnt and all evacuated residents now rehoused. The Civil Guard suspects it may have been started deliberately after detecting two separate sources of ignition.
Between 1 January and 2 August 2026, 186,544 hectares of forest were burnt in Spain, according to provisional figures released on Sunday by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge.
In all of the EU, fires have burned around 485,000 hectares since the beginning of the year, which amounts to half of Cyprus’ surface area.