It is not easy to condense what the disappearance of 647,375 hectares of forest in Europe means amid gigantic tongues of fire. Summer is still here, and the disaster could worsen - in 2025, more than a million hectares were scorched throughout the season. The virulence of the flames sweeping everything away shrinks the soul. In Los Gallardos (Almería), it claimed the lives of fifteen people and destroyed their natural wealth; in Bordeaux, it dangerously threatened the city. Once again, this summer has been the hottest on record. Four heatwaves with peaks close to or exceeding 40 degrees.
In Spain, 295,720 hectares have burned between 1 January and 2 September, representing 45.6% of the total area burned in the EU, according to the Copernicus programme. In July, the two deadliest fires of the summer and our recent history occurred: the aforementioned one in Almería and the simultaneous front in Madrid, Ávila, and Toledo, which devastated more than 77,000 hectares and led the Government to declare a national emergency. Nevertheless, Italy is the European country with the highest number of fires recorded this year, with 543. Spain follows in second place with 433, and France with 357.
It is a scientific consensus that in the Mediterranean region, the climate is warming 20% faster than the global average. Considering that extreme heat and dryness turn forests into kindling and that heatwaves have increased in the region by up to 45% since 2000, there is increasingly less room for burned forests to regenerate. The Union for the Mediterranean, a framework for cooperation among 43 European countries, advocates for interoperability to manage fires of such magnitude. Other forums, such as WWF, believe that the increasing frequency of fires is more related to the rural exodus that has left the mountains orphaned of caretakers.
The picture of the blazing summer is not complete without some adjustments. The first and most important is the excess deaths. From mid-June to mid-August, various European countries have recorded more than 32,000 additional deaths due to heat, 5,000 in Spain. And beyond the Mediterranean, the flows of the Danube and the Rhine, the two main waterways in Europe, are at historic lows, and seven areas in the United Kingdom covering 51.4% of the country have declared drought alerts. Drought for the second consecutive year in the United Kingdom.
