Aldea del Fresno (Spain) (AFP) – Thousands of Spaniards evacuated from the path of huge wildfires were returning home on Wednesday while in France firefighters braced for worsening conditions in their own battle with raging flames.
Issued on: 29/07/2026 - 11:52
3 min Reading time
The neighbouring countries have been gripped by some of the worst forest fires in living memory over the past week, burning vast areas and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.Late on Tuesday, Spain lifted more than a dozen evacuation orders for municipalities west of the capital Madrid, the centre of the worst of the fires."24,000 evacuated individuals have been able to return to their homes, and another 20,000 have been released from confinement in the Community of Madrid," central government delegate to the region Francisco Martin Aguirre said on X late on Tuesday.Similar measures were lifted in the Valencia region, in the east of the country."I'm happy -- I couldn't wait to come home and have my coffee and breakfast," said Maria Jesus Perez Blanca, a woman in her seventies who was one of about a dozen returnees at the cafes of Aldea del Fresno, west of Madrid on Wednesday morning.Beside her, her daughter Susana Barrul, a 39-year-old housewife said she was glad to be back in her home and returning to the daily routine of "getting up in the morning, having coffee, going shopping, coming home, and cooking".The central government's Madrid delegate's office said on Wednesday that better overnight weather conditions had helped crews reduce the intensity of the fires and stabilise their perimeter.Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told reporters on Tuesday that firefighters were containing the fires and aimed Wednesday to stabilise and extinguish all the flames if possible.Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez meanwhile said Wednesday that efforts to extinguish a major wildfire near Madrid were progressing "favourably". "I believe the next 12 hours will be very important -- they will be decisive for the work of consolidating the work that the civil protection service has done," Sanchez said.In France, the Gironde prefecture reported a second calm night and said the massive fire in the region west of France's wine-making capital of Bordeaux was stable.'Extreme temperatures'
