‘Human activity and depopulated villages have played a part’
In Galicia, large stretches of unmanaged vegetation and depopulated villages in forested land have led to the buildup of wildfire fuel, said Adrian Regos, an ecologist at the Biological Mission of Galicia, a research institute.
The fires in Spain have killed four people this year and burned more than 382,000 hectares or about 1,475 square miles, according to the European Union’s European Forest Fire Information System. That surface area is more than twice the size of metropolitan London, more than six times the 2006-2024 average for land burned during the same period.
Air quality deteriorated across large parts of Spain over the past week as a result of the wildfires, data from the EU’s Copernicus climate monitoring agency showed. Smoke from the Iberian Peninsula fires reached France, the UK, and Scandinavia, it said.
Several fires have been caused by human activity. Police have detained 23 people for suspected arson and are investigating 89 more, Spain’s Civil Guard said Tuesday.