Bordeaux Suburbs at Risk as 200,000 Flee Fires in France, Spain
(Bloomberg) -- More than 200,000 people fled towns in central Spain and southern France overnight as uncontrolled wildfires moved ever closer to the cities of Madrid and Bordeaux.
Authorities have ordered the immediate evacuation of some western suburbs of Bordeaux because of the shifting fires, an area that includes the city’s airport.
More than 140,000 people have been evacuated in the departments of Gironde, which includes Bordeaux, and Landes in southwestern France, with fires reaching “an unprecedented level,” Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said in a post on X late on Friday.
More than 500 military personnel have been deployed and similar numbers will be added on Saturday to support firefighters tackling the blazes, he said, adding that “security forces remain fully mobilized to support evacuations, secure affected areas, and protect property against looting.”
Some 63,000 people were evacuated or ordered to stay indoors in the Madrid region and Avila province, the country’s Interior Ministry said late on Friday. No casualties have been reported so far.
Fires that have ravaged the southwestern corner of the Madrid region, burning more than 9,000 hectares (22,000 acres) in their path, remained active and uncontrolled on Saturday, officials said. After reaching their most intense point on Friday afternoon, what had been three separate fronts merged into a single blaze that continued to spread in what regional authorities described as “beyond control capacity.”
Madrid’s air-quality monitoring system recorded a sharp deterioration in the city’s west on Saturday morning, with the smell of smoke hanging in the air near the Royal Palace in central Madrid.
Cooler temperatures, weaker winds and higher humidity overnight may present “an opportunity” for crews to bring the conflagration under control, a Spanish government official said on Friday.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday night ordered the military to mobilize as fires approached the Bordeaux metropolitan area, home to over one million people. Towns nearby are being evacuated protectively. Bison Fute, a popular traffic information website, urged drivers to avoid roads in Gironde to facilitate access for emergency services.
Gironde faces a convective blaze, which generates its own winds, accelerates its spread and can abruptly change direction, Lecornu said — a phenomenon firefighters have never encountered before.
Spain and France have been at the epicenter of Europe’s wildfire season, which started earlier than normal and accelerated in recent weeks as successive heat waves baked vegetation, making it easier for flames to spread rapidly. Fires have burned more than 329,000 hectares across the continent, destroying crops and disrupting transport.
Fires in Spain have so far passed through a NASA complex in Robledo de Chavela — one of three NASA Deep Space Network sites in the world — and a 12th century monastery in Pelayos de la Presa, next to where one of the fires originated. The blaze is now heading toward the towns of El Escorial and San Lorenzo de El Escorial, home to about 36,000 people and El Escorial, a 16th century palace that’s the world’s largest Renaissance building.
Authorities are also battling a separate wildfire in neighboring Ávila province amid fears it could merge with the one burning in the Madrid region.
Evacuees have in many cases been taken to municipal sports centers as a precautionary measure, mostly to avoid exposure to heavy smoke, which travels faster than flames.
On Friday, French authorities ordered the evacuation of 110,000 residents and tourists after wildfires threatened to reach Cap Ferret, a popular tourist area west of Bordeaux, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on TF1 television.
The blazes have burned about 30,000 hectares and engulfed a number of houses in the Gironde department, according to local officials. In Landes department, further south, wildfires torched 2,600 hectares, leading to the evacuation of more than 23,000 people.
By declaring a national emergency for Madrid and Avila, the Spanish government has taken control of the response, with the Interior Ministry coordinating efforts and the country’s military emergency unit managing field operations. Last week was the worst for wildfires across Spain this year, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. A total of about 140,000 hectares have burnt in the country so far in 2026, more than three times the average for the past two decades.
Climate change is intensifying periods of extreme heat in Europe, the fastest-warming continent. Record-breaking heat and drought have fueled the worst start ever to the global wildfire season, with climate scientists warning that a developing El Niño could bring even harsher conditions later this summer.
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