The fire broke out on Thursday in a forested mountainous area near the village of La Mierlos in the Castilla-La Mancha region, about 100 kilometers from Madrid.
Authorities ordered the evacuation of four more villages on Sunday evening, and the number of people forced to leave their homes exceeded 1,200, the regional wildfire suppression service reported on the social network X.
The fire devastated more than 26,000 hectares of land – roughly equivalent to the area of the city of Edinburgh in Scotland.
The head of the regional government, Emiliano Garcia-Page, said officials are making “truly titanic” efforts to control the fire.
“We will defeat this fire, people should not doubt that,” he told reporters, emphasizing that the “absolute priority” is the “protection of towns and settlements.”
According to him, the fire is “complex” because it rages in an “emptied Spain, abandoned areas of Spain.”
“These are vast areas scattered with micro-villages, tiny settlements. In the fire zone, we have nearly 30 villages surrounded by flames,” said E. Garcia-Page.
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An AFP news agency journalist saw bright red flames and rising smoke on Sunday night from a commercial plane flying over the affected region.
On Sunday, firefighters managed to stop the spread of another forest fire near Zaragoza in northeastern Spain after it destroyed about 15,000 hectares.
Earlier this month, Spain experienced one of the deadliest recent forest fires when a fire in the southern province of Almeria claimed 13 lives and destroyed about 7,000 hectares.
Scientists say that due to human-caused climate change, the duration, intensity, and frequency of heatwaves are increasing. This causes vegetation to dry out and raises the risk of devastating forest fires.
According to data from the European Forest Fire Information System, fires destroyed more than 393,000 hectares in 2025 – the most in Spain’s recent history.
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