Spain to launch biggest forest fire campaign after record losses last year, Sánchez says

Published on 21/05/2026 - 16:46 GMT+2

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez presented what helium called Spain's biggest-ever run against wood fires connected Thursday aft deadly blazes devoured a grounds magnitude of onshore past year.

Spain is 1 of the confederate European countries connected the beforehand enactment of clime alteration arsenic higher mean temperatures stoke heatwaves, droughts and wood fires.

The state sweltered done its hottest summertime connected grounds successful 2025, erstwhile astir 4,000 quadrate kilometres of onshore went up successful smoke, the highest fig registered by the European Forest Fire Information System.

"We volition enactment successful spot each the resources" disposable to the authorities "to mitigate this exigency concern arsenic overmuch arsenic imaginable and to forestall it happening again connected this scale," Sánchez said astatine the Torrejón airbase extracurricular Madrid.

He described the preparations arsenic "the state's largest deployment for an anti-fires campaign... due to the fact that we are besides alert that, unfortunately, this menace is growing."

The tools see caller helicopters and planes, amphibious aircraft, drones, vehicles, vigor cameras and precocious surveillance systems to tackle blazes that onslaught "with greater force, greater virulence" and are harder to extinguish, Sánchez said.

The interior ministry said the authoritative wood occurrence play would beryllium brought guardant by 2 weeks to 1 June for the 2nd twelvemonth moving to respond to the danger.

Sánchez besides announced greater coordination betwixt levels of authorities to respond much efficaciously to fires, a predominant root of governmental friction successful Spain's decentralised strategy arsenic regions are chiefly liable for exigency management.

The worst-affected regions during past summer's blazes, Galicia, Castile and León, and Extremadura, are tally by the right, sparking recriminations with the leftist cardinal government.

"This battle...is won unneurotic with unity, with organization loyalty, and not with confrontation," Sánchez said.

"Fire does not separate betwixt administrations, it does not inquire who governs," the Socialist person added, reiterating a plea for "a nationalist pact against the clime emergency."