With hundreds of firefighters still deployed in Madrid, Ávila and Toledo battling the worst forest fire on record in Spain, it is still too soon to know exactly how much this year's blazes will cost the country's public finances. What is clear, however, in light of the 2025 figures, is that the bill will be steep.
According to Greenpeace's report "Major forest fires", drawn up using data from the National Association of Forestry Companies (Asemfo), it is estimated that last year the Spanish government allocated between 3,548 and 6,741 million euros to extinguishing fires which, according to data (source in Spanish) from the Interior Ministry, devastated nearly 354,793 hectares across the country in a total of 8,189 recorded incidents.
The calculation varies depending on whether the benchmark is the estimated per-hectare cost used by the Navarra Forestry Agency, set at 10,000 euros, or the figures used by Asemfo, which put the cost at around 19,000 euros per hectare. In any case, these estimates only cover the average cost of firefighting operations, without taking into account the restoration of the affected areas.
Given that, according to the latest progress report (source in Spanish) from the Ministry for Ecological Transition, the forest area affected by fires in Spain since the start of the year already stands at 172,396 hectares – practically half the total that burned in 2025 – the bill so far this year could come to between 1,723 and 3,275 million euros.
