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Hundreds of firefighters battled a fast-spreading wildfire near Spain’s Costa Brava on Friday, forcing evacuations and confining thousands of residents to their homes as flames advanced toward one of the country’s busiest summer tourist regions.
The fire started in the morning near the northeastern municipality of La Bisbal d’Emporda, about 20 kilometres from the Mediterranean coastline, before strong winds fuelled its rapid spread.
Authorities in the Catalonia region advised residents in 10 municipalities, including the popular seaside resort of Platja d’Aro, to remain indoors as emergency crews worked to contain the blaze.
Regional emergency services said around 150 people, including about 70 children attending a holiday camp, were evacuated as a precaution.
Images released by the Catalan fire service showed helicopters dropping water over the flames while thick smoke covered the forested landscape. Visitors at nearby beaches also witnessed firefighting aircraft flying overhead as smoke spread across the coastline.
Catalan fire service chief David Borrell said the smoke column had developed into a powerful pyrocumulus cloud, warning that shifting wind conditions could complicate firefighting efforts.
“The column (of smoke) is very slanted, it has formed a very violent pyrocumulus” that would keep shifting, said Borrell.
More than 200 firefighters, supported by aerial resources, were deployed to tackle the blaze.
Catalonia’s Interior Minister, Nuria Parlon, said the fire had already consumed about 1,280 hectares of land, adding that more than 200 military personnel from Spain’s emergency response unit had been mobilised to reinforce operations and respond to any additional incidents.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in a post on X (formerly Twitter) expressed concern over the situation and urged the public to exercise extreme caution as high temperatures persist across the country.
Police in Catalonia said a man had been arrested on suspicion of accidentally starting the fire while using an angle grinder along a roadside.
Spain has experienced increasingly severe wildfires in recent years, with scientists linking the growing frequency and intensity of such events to climate change, which has contributed to prolonged heatwaves and drier conditions.
According to the European Forest Fire Information System, wildfires destroyed nearly 400,000 hectares of land in Spain last year, the highest annual total ever recorded for the country.
