More than 1,200 people flee wildfire north of Madrid

More than 1,200 people have fled a major wildfire north of Madrid, firefighters said on Monday. The fire has been burning through a mountainous area with small villages.

The fire started on Thursday in a forest-covered mountainous area near La Mierla, in the Castilla-La Mancha region, about 100 kilometres, or 60 miles, from Madrid. The regional forest fire response service said on X that authorities ordered the evacuation of four more villages late on Sunday, bringing the number of people forced from their homes to more than 1,200.

The fire has burned more than 26,000 hectares, or 65,000 acres, an area described as roughly equivalent to the Scottish city of Edinburgh.

Emiliano Garcia-Page, head of the regional government, said authorities were making a very large effort to contain the blaze. He said the priority was to protect towns and population centres. He also said the fire was complex because it was burning through an area of small and sparsely populated villages, with nearly 30 hamlets inside the fire zone and surrounded by flames.

A journalist flying over the affected region late on Sunday saw bright red flames and smoke rising from the ground.

Firefighters on Sunday managed to limit the spread of another wildfire near Zaragoza in northeastern Spain after it burned around 15,000 hectares. Earlier in July, Spain had one of its deadliest wildfires in recent history when a blaze in the southern province of Almeria killed 13 people and destroyed around 7,000 hectares.

Scientists say human-caused climate change is increasing the length, intensity and frequency of heatwaves, drying vegetation and raising the risk of destructive wildfires. According to the European Forest Fire Information System, more than 393,000 hectares were destroyed by fire in Spain in 2025, the most in the country's recent history.