France says the Gironde fire did not advance overnight, and Spain's weather agency forecasts a fourth heatwave from Wednesday

Laurent Nunez, France's interior minister, said the fires had not progressed during the night.

That is the whole of Monday's good news, and after five days it counts as a great deal. The Gironde prefecture called the overnight situation stable. No new evacuations were ordered. President Emmanuel Macron convened a crisis meeting of the cabinet and, having convened it, said nothing publicly afterwards. Nunez paired his own sentence with a warning that authorities had to stay concentrated and determined and ready to move at any moment, which is the standard caution of a fire officer who has seen a wind change before.

The fire is still close to Bordeaux. Thomas Cazenave, the city's mayor, said on Monday that it remains at the gates of the metropolitan area, and at their nearest point the flames have come within 15km of a city of roughly 850,000 people. Authorities banned children's holiday camps across the Gironde as a precaution, which in a department that fills with visitors in late July is a substantial measure taken while the situation is described as stable.

Spain is further along. A fire in the region of Madrid that has burned over 60,000 acres was still active on Monday, with strong wind gusts complicating the work, and a second fire in Avila has burned over 100,000 acres. Spanish authorities said on Sunday that both had been brought under control, a day after openly saying they were not. A third fire, in Castellon in the east, has affected about 75,000 people, some evacuated and some told to stay at their properties, and crews hope to contain it by Tuesday.

Tuesday matters because of what Aemet said on Monday. Spain's national meteorology agency forecast that the fourth heatwave of the summer will begin on Wednesday, which converts an improving situation into a countdown. Aemet has also said this summer is on track to be the hottest on record in Spain.

Two figures from the weekend give the season its scale, and both come from ministers rather than from this desk. Nunez said on Saturday that more than 242,000 acres have burned in France this year, a record. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the same day that more than 300,000 acres have burned in Spain, against an annual average of 250,000 over the past decade.

A note on the evacuation totals, because they have moved in both directions and readers of this site have seen more than one of them. NPR reported on Monday that more than 220,000 people were evacuated in the Gironde alone, more than 250,000 in France, and more than 300,000 across both countries. This site published a figure of more than 360,000 across France and Spain on Sunday, sourced to Al Jazeera. The two are not reconcilable from the outside, and the likeliest explanation, that some evacuees have gone home, is an inference rather than a reported fact, so it is offered as one.

There is no primary document under this item. The Gironde prefecture's own site is not reachable from this desk, the Copernicus Emergency Management Service activation record linked in earlier coverage freezes its burned-area figure at the moment mapping was requested and understates the fire badly, and no French or Spanish authority has published a consolidated damage assessment. Every figure above is attributed to the person or agency that gave it.