Spain declared a national emergency over the Madrid and Avila fires, and the evacuation total across France and Spain passed 320,000

Spain has declared a national emergency.

The declaration covers the Madrid area and the province of Avila, where around 100,000 people have been evacuated, according to the Euronews report by Nathan Rennolds published on Sunday. Add the French total and more than 320,000 people are out of their homes across the two countries.

In southwestern France the number is above 220,000. Evacuation orders went out for five more villages around Bordeaux on Saturday night, and local authorities put the burned area in the region at around 42,000 hectares. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez called the situation highly unfavorable on Sunday and said the Gironde blaze had turned extremely fierce and unpredictable during the evening before calming somewhat overnight. He put the French deployment at around 2,500 firefighters, including a Swiss team, alongside 1,500 military personnel and nearly 1,200 police officers and gendarmes.

The national figure is the one Nunez himself flagged. Around 100,000 hectares have burned across France since the beginning of the year, which he called a historic record.

The cross-border response is running through the EU civil protection mechanism. Italy has sent 14 emergency personnel and two Canadair aircraft, Portugal 129 personnel and 41 support vehicles, and Greece 33 personnel, two Canadair aircraft and one support aircraft. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Saturday that five aircraft and two helicopters from the rescEU fleet had been deployed to France.

The document underneath this is the satellite mapping record. The Copernicus Emergency Management Service activated rapid mapping for a wildfire at Saumos, in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, on 22 July at 18:00, under the code EMSR899, and its own description says the fire is ongoing and poses a significant threat to local communities, critical infrastructure, forests and nearby natural resources. A second activation, EMSR902, was requested on 23 July at 14:00 for Biscarrosse in the Landes, and records damage to forestry affecting 2,200 hectares with numerous homes potentially threatened. Euronews reports that the Gironde blaze began at Saumos on Tuesday before spreading southwest toward Le Porge and Lege Cap-Ferret and then east toward the Bordeaux metropolitan area over the weekend.

Two cautions on those activation records, because they are easy to misread. The hectare figures in them are the figures at the moment the mapping was requested, days ago, and they are far below the current estimates. And the Copernicus description names the locality rather than a named fire, so the mapping record and the current blaze are matched here by the account Euronews gives of where the fire started, not by anything the activation itself asserts.

Casualty figures, structures lost, and the separate fires reported in the Var and Hautes-Alpes departments are not carried here. The French and Spanish interior ministry pages were unreachable from this desk on Sunday morning, so every figure above rests on the credited Euronews report and on the two Copernicus records, and nothing has been taken from a summary of a document that was not opened.