Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez presented what he called Spain’s biggest-ever campaign against forest fires on Thursday after deadly blazes devoured a record amount of land last year.
Spain is one of the southern European countries on the front line of climate change as higher average temperatures stoke heatwaves, droughts and forest fires.
The country sweltered through its hottest summer on record in 2025, when almost 4,000 square kilometres of land went up in smoke, the highest figure registered by the European Forest Fire Information System.
“We will put in place all the resources” available to the government “to mitigate this emergency situation as much as possible and to prevent it happening again on this scale,” Sánchez said at the Torrejón airbase outside Madrid.
He described the preparations as “the state’s largest deployment for an anti-fires campaign… because we are also aware that, unfortunately, this threat is growing.”
The tools include new helicopters and planes, amphibious aircraft, drones, vehicles, heat cameras and advanced surveillance systems to tackle blazes that strike “with greater force, greater virulence” and are harder to extinguish, Sánchez said.
The interior ministry said the official forest fire season would be brought forward by two weeks to 1 June for the second year running to respond to the danger.
Sánchez also announced greater coordination between levels of government to respond more effectively to fires, a frequent source of political friction in Spain’s decentralised system as regions are primarily responsible for emergency management.
The worst-affected regions during last summer’s blazes, Galicia, Castile and León, and Extremadura, are run by the right, sparking recriminations with the leftist central government.
“This battle…is won together with unity, with institutional loyalty, and not with confrontation,” Sánchez said.
“Fire does not distinguish between administrations, it does not ask who governs,” the Socialist leader added, reiterating a plea for “a national pact against the climate emergency.”
Additional sources • AFP