A fire broke out on Friday near the tourist Costa Brava, in the north-east of Spain, leading to the confinement of around ten towns in this area of the Catalan coast which is very busy in summer, firefighters announced.
• Also read: Heat records, deaths and duration: here is the assessment of the “historic” heatwave in Europe
The fire started in the morning near the town of La Bisbal d’Empordà, near Girona, around twenty kilometers from the Mediterranean coast.
The wind fanned the progression of the flames, giving rise to a thick cloud of smoke, which pushed the authorities to order the confinement of more than ten municipalities, including Platja d’Aro, a tourist town on the coast.
“The difficulty is that the fire will not be static,” Catalan fire chief David Borrell told reporters.
More than 200 firefighters, including eleven aerial units, are working to put out the fire.
In order to facilitate operations, the firefighters asked on
Faced with worsening conditions due to the wind, the president of the Catalan regional government, Salvador Illa, requested the intervention of the army and its Emergency Military Unit to extinguish this fire as well as another, for the moment of smaller scale, declared a little further north.
“It is a fire which is active, which is not under control”, underlined Salvador Illa about the main fire, asking the residents concerned to respect the confinement instructions.
Located on the front line of climate change, Spain experienced “the worst fires in its recent history” last summer, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez recalled in May.
In 2025, more than 393,000 hectares were ravaged by flames in the country, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).
During the more than 8,000 fires recorded during the year, eight people lost their lives, 86 were injured and more than 42,000 were evacuated, according to the Interior Ministry.
