Until about 10 days, 2025 was being a relatively good and quiet year in terms of forest fires in Spain. However, coinciding with and that has been generalized to the Peninsula and Balearic Islands, an important part of the country has become hell and forest fires have run into areas of Galicia, Castilla y León and Extremadura. A considerable part have been simultaneous mega -capital, with affected areas above 10,000 hectares. And the burnt surface statistics have been fulminated in a handful of days.
It is still early to be able to have the complete portrait of what happened. Among other things, because this fire episode is not over. The afternoon of this Sunday, with the province of Ourense again as one of the critical points. But the data that the Ministry begins to handle for the ecological transition, which are delayed because they depend largely on what the communities transfer them and these do not facilitate the information until the fires are extinguished, they already point to a disastrous summer.
Ecological transition has hung on Sunday night in provisional fire statistics until August 10. And to that date, that is, a week ago, the estimation of the department technicians directed by Vice President Sara Aagesen is that the surface affected by the fire in all 2025 is 138,788.97 hectares. It is a brutal growth with respect to the last report of the Ministry, which aimed at an affected surface of 39,155.13 hectares as of August 5. That is, in just five days the surface would have multiplied by 3.5.
This data advance has been made differently than this department usually does because it is normally based on the information that communicates to the communities. If it is attended only to what the autonomies have transferred, on August 10 there would be 41,498.16 forest hectares burned in Spain, that is, a growth of less than 2,500 hectares. But this is because what was communicated by regional governments “does not include the surface of the large fires produced in recent weeks by not being extinguished at the date of publication of this report,” is explained in the document. “In the absence of such information, the affected surface has been estimated through the Forest Fire Information System (), estimating at 97,291 hectares the affected surface that would be included,” adds the technicians. As a result, the estimated total for August 10 is 138,788.97 hectares. In the last decade, only in 2022 – a nefarious year – they had burned at this point of the year more hectares than now. Then there were 214,966.72.
However, in the ministry they assume that the burned surface of this 2025 will still be much greater than the report published this Sunday. Among other things, because in the seven days that are not included, huge fires have yet been unleashed, such as Mozyuelas de la Carballeda, which started on Sunday, August 10, which has affected Zamora and León, and that.
