By Michael Francis Gore and Stephane Mahe
NAVALUENGA, Spain/LEGE-CAP-FERRET, France, July 24 (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of people fled wildfires in southwest France by car and boat on Friday, and Spain declared a national emergency as huge blazes merged outside Madrid and searing heat left tinder-dry conditions across the region.
French authorities ordered the total evacuation of the Cap Ferret peninsula, a tourism hotspot on its Atlantic Coast. A third fire was on the verge of joining two fires
that had merged outside Madrid, government officials said.
Both countries, which have suffered a succession of heatwaves and fires in recent months and years that scientists say have been exacerbated by climate change, sought help from the European Union as the blazes strained emergency services.
Spain's national emergency — the first it had ever declared over a wildfire — opened up federal funding to tackle the crisis.
"This is the worst wildfire in our region's history," Madrid's regional leader Isabel Diaz Ayuso said after telling reporters the fires had merged. "It's the perfect storm of very high temperatures and ceaseless winds that aren't letting up."
THE CLOUDS BECAME 'DARKER AND DARKER'
In southwest France, authorities sent boats to help the evacuation, and about 110,000 people, many of them tourists, were told to leave as two major fires threatened homes and campsites, officials said.
"This is a convective fire: It is self-sustaining, changes direction, and is moving mainly eastward, toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area," Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told broadcaster TF1, though he added that Bordeaux was not currently threatened. He said 53 homes had been destroyed.
Yoan Urien, who fled late on Thursday after police ordered his neighbourhood in the town of Biscarrosse to evacuate, said it was possible to see the fires from his home.
"We could see the clouds becoming darker and darker," the 26-year-old told Reuters.
Marie Duelz, a 51-year-old Belgian tourist vacationing at Cap Ferret, said she saw "a cloud of ash that was blocking the sun, basically."
The other major fire, which began in the nearby village of Saumos, north of Cap Ferret, is threatening to cut off the only road out of the peninsula and is the largest so far this season in France, Nunez told local television.
It has torn through more than 14,000 hectares of forest and destroyed more than 100 homes and one campsite, officials said.
"It breaks my heart. Because it's such a pleasant place to live, seeing it go up in smoke is truly sad," said family caregiver Corinne Paillaube.
"It's totally apocalyptic," said Ambre Dubos, from the nearby Landes region.
'THERE WAS A BALL OF FIRE'
In Spain, more than 19,000 people were ordered to evacuate from towns in the mountains west of Madrid, as more than 2,000 personnel and 10 aircraft struggled in vain to prevent the fires converging, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said.
"I had to run from my house. There was a ball of fire. If I'd taken five more minutes, it would have wiped us out," evacuee Enrique Martin said in a shelter in Cebreros, west of Madrid.
A third fire in Avila province was on the verge or may have already merged with the two in Madrid, Nicanor Sen, the government representative for the Castile and Leon region, told reporters. Spanish police said they had arrested one person and were investigating another suspected of starting that fire by using heavy machinery in a prohibited area.
The area west of Madrid, where many residents from the capital have second homes, is densely populated. In just one development 43 homes had been destroyed, Diaz Ayuso said.
That played a role in the government decision to declare a national emergency, Grande-Marlaska said.
It is the second consecutive year that Spain has faced a particularly destructive fire season.
More than 29 major fires have broken out in Spain so far this year, damaging a surface area five times greater than at the same stage in 2025, when a record area was destroyed, Environment Minister Sara Aagesen said in a social media post.
HEAT HITS CROPS, NUCLEAR PLANT COOLING
Wildfires have burned more land in Europe already this year than the annual average in the past two decades, data shows as the world's fastest-warming continent has endured three stifling, virtually back-to-back heatwaves so far this year.
Scientists say human-driven climate change is increasing the intensity of heatwaves, droughts and wildfires, while also creating conditions for sudden, destructive storms.
Greece was sending two firefighting aircraft to Spain, and Croatia provided a similar plane and staff to aid France while Italy dispatched a firefighting plane to Tunisia which also has wildfires, authorities said.
After a short reprieve over the weekend, average temperatures in France are expected to rise sharply again next week, according to official weather forecaster Meteo France. The high temperatures are expected to warm French rivers that cool nuclear reactors and could lead to reduced power output. The Golfech 2 nuclear reactor in southern France has remained offline since July 7 due to heat-related restrictions, operator EDF's data showed.
Weeks of hot weather are also taking a toll on the condition of the maize crop in France.
(Additional reporting by Manuel Ausloos, Coralie Lamarque, Elissa Darwish, Zhifan Liu, Forrest Crellin, Inti Landauro, Guillermo Martinez, Violeta Santos Moura, David Latona, Marco Trujillo and Emma Pinedo; Writing by Charlie Devereux and Ingrid Melander; Editing by Helen Popper, Andrew Heavens and Cynthia Osterman)
